Value-of-information based middleware for autonomic querying of distributed sensor databases

With particular focus on distributed situational awareness in defense and security applications, we propose a value-ofinformation based middleware framework as a paradigm shift from crawl-index based centralized search. The proposed approach seeks to improve efficiency in search and retrieval by transforming sensors into programmable information points and enabling ubiquitous data and software flows through the infrastructure of the distributed network. We explain the different components of such a middleware framework to organize, tag and notify emerging spatial, temporal and causal patterns from the sensor measurements. We conclude the paper with a brief discussion on the top-down programming model that can realize the framework as a reconfigurable sensor query system.