A KNOWLEDGE BASED SYSTEM FOR CLASSIFICATION OF OBSTACLES IN WAR PLANNING

Abstract

"The battle supremacy will be decided by those armed forces, who can successfully deploy their fighting troops at the right position, at the right time and in the right strength vis-à-vis those of the enemy." The effective deployment of the fighting troops is possible only when the latest information on enemy's position and that of the battle terrain is available to the military commanders during war planning. Using the terrain information, the cross-country maneuverability of the fighting troops and the obstacle crossing on battle terrain are required to be planned for the deployment of the fighting troops. The conventional war planning, using the SOI maps demands their interpretation to decide the characteristics of the terrain. The interpretation process of these maps on various terrain features is comparatively slow. The analogue maps need enormous time to update and they do not cater for the seasonal changes in terrain such as the width of waterbody or the moisture condition of soil. Such war planning is comparatively slow for the present scenario and for the fighting forces of the 2 1 st century. The digital data from satellite sensors provide the near real time spatial information. These data are useful in prompt interpretation of the terrain features as required by the analysts in war planning. The derived thematic maps from satellite data may also be used to acquire the characteristics of the terrain in war planning. The analysis of the digital data on computer is fast in comparison to the analogue maps. Various experts' knowledge on terrain analysis can be converted into the rules that can be applied on to the digital data to derive the thematic maps as required by the analysts in war planning. This work includes the methodology of using digital image analysis and its advantages in comparison to the conventional war planning. The knowledge based system based on numeric processing named 'Expert System for Classification of the iii Obstacles in War Planning' (ESCOWP) is developed using Visual C++ developer studio. The derived thematic maps of waterbody, slope, soil, vegetation, built-up area and moisture are the input to this expert system. The two modules of knowledge base are applied on to these digital maps to derive the thematic maps in digital form for the vehicle maneuverability and the obstacle crossing classes desired by the analysts in war planning. These thematic maps, can further be used in war planning. The updating of these derived thematic maps is possible by changing the data input to ESCOWP. The in-depth information on the details of the military vehicles and those of the military bridging equipment are masked from the security point of view