ITF | Information Technology for Command & Control Systems

Scientific orientation

The department develops architectures and interoperability solutions for distributed C2 and decision support systems. Its mission is the research and development of innovative solutions in the fields network centric warfare and business intelligence. The general aim is to support decision processes that are characterized by

concurrent, dislocated and heterogeneous stakeholders who all claim for limited resources,

a vital cooperation in a complex and vague environment where trust cannot be ensured,

the need for a rapid analysis and assessment of the situation,

decisions with high impact but a vague information situation,

unpredictable external events that enforce a permanent adaption of plans and measures,

conflicts between project and line organization,

and many heterogeneous and semantical not interoperable IT-Systems.

Customers are the Bundeswehr, civil security authorities, organizations and companies that are responsible or operate complex and significantly important infrastructures.

The department's technological competence and expertise center on two key areas arising from the networking of forces and their systems: ensuring semantic and pragmatic interoperability of information exchange and developing architectures that support the required networking itself and the consistency of the information exchange. Information analysis studies round out the spectrum.

 

Press release / 10.2.2025

Research for NATO

Fraunhofer FKIE is one of the strongest partners of the NATO Science & Technology Organization (STO). The institute is significantly involved in the organization's current 350 research activities. One of them is NATO Research Task Group “Edge Computing at the Tactical Edge” (IST-193). The group is working on an important prerequisite for uninterrupted communication and cooperation in joint operations: the federation of various national clouds.

 

Press release / 31.1.2024

NLytics System wins international competition

More success for Fraunhofer FKIE scientist Albert Pritzkau: His NLytics system was declared the winner of the newest shared-task competition CLAIMSCAN 2023, organized by the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. The system is the result of a joint research project in collaboration with the University of the Bundeswehr Munich and aims to detect propaganda and misinformation campaigns on social media using AI.

 

AI-supported requirements analysis

RAT, the »Requirements Analysis Toolkit«, helps project team members in companies and government agencies to detect ambiguous requirements, reformulate them, and create an overview of all the requirements in a project. Until now, a technical aid for this task has been unavailable.

 

Sensor-based Monitoring of Agricultural Areas

Feeding our steadily growing world population is both one of the greatest global challenges and one of the most important research and business areas of Bayer AG. In the »SensFArM« project, Fraunhofer FKIE has developed a system that monitors the test fields where Bayer conducts its complex and costly research.

 

 

Process optimization in aviation

»Intelsys« is a modular and flexibly expandable decision support system that integrates information from disparate data sources to create a common geo-referenced operational picture. An ergonomically optimized operational picture provides users in the complex, safety-critical airport environment with all of the information they need to perform their tasks. The system has already been successfully deployed at the Cologne/Bonn Airport.

 

Clarity in the jungle of energy research

The landscape of energy research is becoming increasingly complex. What are the federal and state governments funding, where, and how? Since May 2017, a central online information portal has been creating transparency. It gives project sponsors, policy makers and the public unified access to information on energy research in Germany. The specialized ontology for the new semantic search function offered through the portal is a development of the Fraunhofer FKIE.

 

Interoperability in Multinational Missions

In a multinational mission, soldiers from different nations operate side by side, their vehicles and the subsystems installed in them are integrated into a single information network. The prerequisite for this is the interoperability of the systems. At Fraunhofer FKIE one of these standards is being developed in cooperation with multinational partners.

 

NewsHawk® – Social Media Monitoring

Digital media offer numerous advantages. They provide information, are available to everyone and also enable exchange between users. At the same time, however, they are also confusing and have their own distribution dynamics due to non-transparent algorithms. With NewsHawk®, Fraunhofer FKIE has developed an automated AI tool that supports the monitoring of social media.