Data fusion

Data fusion is the process of integrating multiple data

sources to produce more consistent, accurate, and useful
information than that provided by any individual data
source.

Data fusion processes are often categorized as low,

intermediate, or high, depending on the processing stage
at which fusion takes place.[1] Low-level data fusion
combines several sources of raw data to produce new
raw data. The expectation is that fused data is more
informative and synthetic than the original inputs.

For example, sensor fusion is also known as (multi-

sensor) data fusion and is a subset of information fusion.

The concept of data fusion has origins in the evolved Fusion of the data from two sources (dimensions
capacity of humans and animals to incorporate #1 & #2) can yield a classifier superior to any
information from multiple senses to improve their ability classifiers based on dimension #1 or dimension
to survive. For example, a combination of sight, touch, #2 alone.
smell, and taste may indicate whether a substance is
edible.[2]

The JDL/DFIG model

In the mid-1980s, the Joint Directors of Laboratories
formed the Data Fusion Subpanel (which later became
known as the Data Fusion Group). With the advent of
the World Wide Web, data fusion thus included data,
sensor, and information fusion. The JDL/DFIG
introduced a model of data fusion that divided the
various processes. Currently, the six levels with the Data
Fusion Information Group (DFIG) model are:

Level 0: Source Preprocessing (or Data Assessment)

Joint Director of the Labs (JDL)/Data Fusion
Level 1: Object Assessment Information Group (DFIG) Model

Level 2: Situation Assessment

Level 3: Impact Assessment (or Threat Refinement)

Level 4: Process Refinement (or Resource Management)

Level 5: User Refinement (or Cognitive Refinement)

Level 6: Mission Refinement (or Mission Management)

Although the JDL Model (Level 1–4) is still in use today, it is often criticized for its implication that the
levels necessarily happen in order and also for its lack of adequate representation of the potential for a
human-in-the-loop. The DFIG model (Level 0–5) explored the implications of situation awareness, user
refinement, and mission management.[3] Despite these shortcomings, the JDL/DFIG models are useful for
visualizing the data fusion process, facilitating discussion and common understanding,[4] and important for
systems-level information fusion design.[3] [5]

Geospatial applications
In the geospatial (GIS) domain, data fusion is often synonymous with data integration. In these
applications, there is often a need to combine diverse data sets into a unified (fused) data set which includes
all of the data points and time steps from the input data sets. The fused data set is different from a simple
combined superset in that the points in the fused data set contain attributes and metadata which might not
have been included for these points in the original data set.

A simplified example of this process is shown below where data set "α" is fused with data set β to form the
fused data set δ. Data points in set "α" have spatial coordinates X and Y and attributes A1 and A2. Data
points in set β have spatial coordinates X and Y and attributes B1 and B2. The fused data set contains all
points and attributes.

Input Data Set α Input Data Set β Fused Data Set δ

Point X Y A1 A2 B1 B2

δ1 10 10 M N Q? R?

Point X Y A1 A2 Point X Y B1 B2 δ2 10 30 M N Q? R?
α1 10 10 M N β1 20 20 Q R δ3 30 10 M N Q? R?

α2 10 30 M N β2 20 40 Q R δ4 30 30 M N Q? R?

α3 30 10 M N β3 40 20 Q R δ5 20 20 M? N? Q R
α4 30 30 M N β4 40 40 Q R δ6 20 40 M? N? Q R

δ7 40 20 M? N? Q R

δ8 40 40 M? N? Q R

In a simple case where all attributes are uniform across the entire analysis domain, the attributes may be
simply assigned: M?, N?, Q?, R? to M, N, Q, R. In a real application, attributes are not uniform and some
type of interpolation is usually required to properly assign attributes to the data points in the fused set.

In a much more complicated application, marine animal researchers use data fusion to combine animal
tracking data with bathymetric, meteorological, sea surface temperature (SST) and animal habitat data to
examine and understand habitat utilization and animal behavior in reaction to external forces such as
weather or water temperature. Each of these data sets exhibit a different spatial grid and sampling rate so a
simple combination would likely create erroneous assumptions and taint the results of the analysis. But
through the use of data fusion, all data and attributes are brought together into a single view in which a
more complete picture of the environment is created. This enables scientists to identify key locations and
times and form new insights into the interactions between the environment and animal behaviors.
In the figure at right, rock lobsters are
studied off the coast of Tasmania. Hugh
Pederson of the University of Tasmania
used data fusion software to fuse southern
rock lobster tracking data (color-coded for
in yellow and black for day and night,
respectively) with bathymetry and habitat
data to create a unique 4D picture of rock
lobster behavior.

Data integration
Visualization of fused data sets for rock lobster tracks in the
In applications outside of the geospatial
Tasman Sea. Image generated using Eonfusion software by
domain, differences in the usage of the Myriax Pty. Ltd.
terms Data integration and Data fusion
apply. In areas such as business intelligence,
for example, data integration is used to describe the combining of data, whereas data fusion is integration
followed by reduction or replacement. Data integration might be viewed as set combination wherein the
larger set is retained, whereas fusion is a set reduction technique with improved confidence.

Application areas
Bioinformatics
Biometrics
Business intelligence
Business performance management
Cheminformatics
Quantitative structure-activity relationship
Discovery science
Geospatial information systems
Intelligence services
Intelligent transport systems
Loyalty card
Oceanography
Soil mapping
Wireless sensor networks

From multiple traffic sensing modalities

The data from the different sensing technologies can be combined in intelligent ways to determine the
traffic state accurately. A Data fusion based approach that utilizes the road side collected acoustic, image
and sensor data has been shown to combine the advantages of the different individual methods.[6]

Decision fusion
In many cases, geographically dispersed sensors are severely energy- and bandwidth-limited. Therefore, the
raw data concerning a certain phenomenon are often summarized in a few bits from each sensor. When
inferring on a binary event (i.e., or ), in the extreme case only binary decisions are sent from
sensors to a Decision Fusion Center (DFC) and combined in order to obtain improved classification
performance.[7][8][9]

For enhanced contextual awareness

With a multitude of built-in sensors including motion sensor, environmental sensor, position sensor, a
modern mobile device typically gives mobile applications access to a number of sensory data which could
be leveraged to enhance the contextual awareness. Using signal processing and data fusion techniques such
as feature generation, feasibility study and principal component analysis (PCA) such sensory data will
greatly improve the positive rate of classifying the motion and contextual relevant status of the device.[10]
Many context-enhanced information techniques are provided by Snidaro, et al.[11][12]

Bayesian auto-regressive Gaussian processes

Gaussian processes are a popular machine learning model. If an auto-regressive relationship between the
data is assumed, and each data source is assumed to be Gaussian process, this constitutes a non-linear
Bayesian regression problem.[13]

See also Multifidelity Simulation

See also
Data assimilation
Data munging
Image fusion
Information integration
Integrative level
Meta-analysis
Sensor fusion

References
1. Klein, Lawrence A. (2004). Sensor and data fusion: A tool for information assessment and
decision making (https://books.google.com/books?id=-782bo4u_ogC). SPIE Press. p. 51.
ISBN 978-0-8194-5435-5.
2. Hall, David L.; Llinas, James (1997). "An introduction to multisensor data fusion" (https://ww
w.researchgate.net/publication/258743232). Proceedings of the IEEE. 85 (1): 6–23.
doi:10.1109/5.554205 (https://doi.org/10.1109%2F5.554205). ISSN 0018-9219 (https://www.
worldcat.org/issn/0018-9219).
3. Blasch, Erik P.; Bossé, Éloi; Lambert, Dale A. (2012). High-Level Information Fusion
Management and System Design. Norwood, MA: Artech House Publishers. ISBN 978-1-
6080-7151-7.
4. Liggins, Martin E.; Hall, David L.; Llinas, James (2008). Multisensor Data Fusion, Second
Edition: Theory and Practice (Multisensor Data Fusion). CRC. ISBN 978-1-4200-5308-1.
 5. Blasch, E., Steinberg, A., Das, S., Llinas, J., Chong, C.-Y., Kessler, O., Waltz, E., White, F."
(2013). Revisiting the JDL model for information Exploitation. International Conference on
Information Fusion.
6. Joshi, V., Rajamani, N., Takayuki, K., Prathapaneni, Subramaniam, L. V. (2013). Information
Fusion Based Learning for Frugal Traffic State Sensing. Proceedings of the Twenty-Third
International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence.
7. Ciuonzo, D.; Papa, G.; Romano, G.; Salvo Rossi, P.; Willett, P. (2013-09-01). "One-Bit
Decentralized Detection With a Rao Test for Multisensor Fusion". IEEE Signal Processing
Letters. 20 (9): 861–864. arXiv:1306.6141 (https://arxiv.org/abs/1306.6141).
Bibcode:2013ISPL...20..861C (https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2013ISPL...20..861C).
doi:10.1109/LSP.2013.2271847 (https://doi.org/10.1109%2FLSP.2013.2271847).
ISSN 1070-9908 (https://www.worldcat.org/issn/1070-9908). S2CID 6315906 (https://api.se
manticscholar.org/CorpusID:6315906).
8. Ciuonzo, D.; Salvo Rossi, P. (2014-02-01). "Decision Fusion With Unknown Sensor
Detection Probability". IEEE Signal Processing Letters. 21 (2): 208–212. arXiv:1312.2227 (h
ttps://arxiv.org/abs/1312.2227). Bibcode:2014ISPL...21..208C (https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/
abs/2014ISPL...21..208C). doi:10.1109/LSP.2013.2295054 (https://doi.org/10.1109%2FLSP.
2013.2295054). ISSN 1070-9908 (https://www.worldcat.org/issn/1070-9908).
S2CID 8761982 (https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:8761982).
9. Ciuonzo, D.; De Maio, A.; Salvo Rossi, P. (2015-09-01). "A Systematic Framework for
Composite Hypothesis Testing of Independent Bernoulli Trials". IEEE Signal Processing
Letters. 22 (9): 1249–1253. Bibcode:2015ISPL...22.1249C (https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/ab
s/2015ISPL...22.1249C). doi:10.1109/LSP.2015.2395811 (https://doi.org/10.1109%2FLSP.2
015.2395811). ISSN 1070-9908 (https://www.worldcat.org/issn/1070-9908).
S2CID 15503268 (https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:15503268).
10. Guiry, John J.; van de Ven, Pepijn; Nelson, John (2014-03-21). "Multi-Sensor Fusion for
Enhanced Contextual Awareness of Everyday Activities with Ubiquitous Devices" (https://w
ww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4004015). Sensors. 14 (3): 5687–5701.
Bibcode:2014Senso..14.5687G (https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2014Senso..14.5687G).
doi:10.3390/s140305687 (https://doi.org/10.3390%2Fs140305687). PMC 4004015 (https://w
ww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4004015). PMID 24662406 (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.
nih.gov/24662406).
11. Snidaro, Laurao; et, al. (2016). Context-Enhanced Information Fusion:Boosting Real-World
Performance with Domain Knowledge. Switzerland, AG: Springer. ISBN 978-3-319-28971-7.
12. Haghighat, Mohammad; Abdel-Mottaleb, Mohamed; Alhalabi, Wadee (2016). "Discriminant
Correlation Analysis: Real-Time Feature Level Fusion for Multimodal Biometric Recognition"
(https://zenodo.org/record/889881). IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and
Security. 11 (9): 1984–1996. doi:10.1109/TIFS.2016.2569061 (https://doi.org/10.1109%2FTI
FS.2016.2569061). S2CID 15624506 (https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:15624506).
13. Ranftl, Sascha; Melito, Gian Marco; Badeli, Vahid; Reinbacher-Köstinger, Alice; Ellermann,
Katrin; von der Linden, Wolfgang (2019-12-31). "Bayesian Uncertainty Quantification with
Multi-Fidelity Data and Gaussian Processes for Impedance Cardiography of Aortic
Dissection" (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7516489). Entropy. 22 (1): 58.
Bibcode:2019Entrp..22...58R (https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2019Entrp..22...58R).
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PMC7516489). PMID 33285833 (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33285833).

Sources
General references

Hall, Dave L.; Llinas, James (1997). "Introduction to Multisensor Data Fusion". Proceedings
of the IEEE. 85 (1): 6–23. doi:10.1109/5.554205 (https://doi.org/10.1109%2F5.554205).
Blasch, Erik; Kadar, Ivan; Salerno, John; Kokar, Mieczyslaw M.; Das, Subrata; Powell,
Gerald M.; Corkill, Daniel D.; Ruspini, Enrique H. (2006). "Issues and Challenges in
Situation Assessment (Level 2 Fusion)" (https://web.archive.org/web/20150527195100/htt
p://www.isif.org/sites/isif.org/files/journals/4-3075D03.pdf) (PDF). Journal of Advances in
Information Fusion. 1 (2). Archived from the original (http://www.isif.org/sites/isif.org/files/jour
nals/4-3075D03.pdf) (PDF) on 2015-05-27.

Bibliography
Hall, David L.; McMullen, Sonya A. H. (2004). Mathematical Techniques in Multisensor Data
Fusion, Second Edition. Norwood, MA: Artech House, Inc. ISBN 978-1-5805-3335-5.
Mitchell, H. B. (2007). Multi-sensor Data Fusion – An Introduction. Berlin: Springer-Verlag.
ISBN 978-3-540-71463-7.
Das, S. (2008). High-Level Data Fusion. Norwood, MA: Artech House Publishers. ISBN 978-
1-59693-281-4.

External links
Discriminant Correlation Analysis (DCA) (https://github.com/mhaghighat/dcaFuse)
Sensordata Fusion, An Introduction (https://archive.today/20121217233635/http://www.nv.et-
inf.uni-siegen.de/pb2/research/others/datafus/datafuse.htm)
International Society of Information Fusion (http://www.isif.org/)
Sensor Fusion for Nanopositioning (https://www.academia.edu/9821404/Sensor_Fusion_in
_Nanopositioning)

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