With the decrease in cost of 3D hardware, and the simultaneous impressive growth in capability, it becomes clear that 3D will be an ubiquitous desktop technology. It makes sense to reexamine where it can become a fundamental technology for IT and knowledge management.

At the same time, knowledge management is an increasing requirement for development of large projects. Ontologies provide an advanced way of describing a system at a very high level, closer to the original intent of the design.

The NASA ECS (Engineering for Complex Systems) Virtual Iron Bird (VIB) is a program to research virtual vehicles that are actually knowledge management systems for the vehicles. It includes CAD/CAM data and also repurposed data for visualization and outreach, systems descriptions, documentation, actual and derived risk knowledge, materials requirements, derived functional information, design decision histories, simulation parameters, and any other pertinent data. The conceptis to have a single location as a starting point to find out anything about the vehicle, and be able to access that information with different mechanisms (a Model-View-Controller approach). The Knowledge Integrating VIB is one where new developed knowledge in turn becomes part of the knowledge base.

Day 1: The Knowledge Integrating Virtual Iron Bird

Day one of the workshop will be for presenting and discussing research topics regarding the IVIB, as well as to present relevant products and technologies, both current and in development. One topic in particular is simulation, especially as a derivative activity from the knowledge base. Knowledge capture is also a pertinent topic

Aerospace systems are increasingly challenging to manage, and system interactions are growing more complex. An integrated data model could access knowledge that is currently spread across many people and organizations, addressing issues of:

• Structural: Where are the parts?
• Functional: How does it work? What roles do parts play?
  
• Behavioral: Under what conditions will parts do that? How can they fail?
• Data: Access for data mining, analysis, and model refinement.
  

The goals for the first day are:

• To define current and forthcoming research areas relevant to NASA's VIB
• To identify topics for collaboration between NASA, academia, and industry in support of the VIB, and even kickstart some joint projects.

Day 2: The Confluence of 3D Graphics, Information Technologies, and Knowledge Management

Day two of the workshop is for pure research topics. Start by making a 3D scene subgraph a basic unit of information, a peer to date, string, etc. Then the datastore can manage the database of the scene graph, creating the paradigm shift of making 3D applications into 3D information clients. It also creates a richer information environment, in that the 3D knowledge becomes integrated with the “business” intelligence.

Raising the bar on the level of abstraction that a database understands in turn provides a higher base level of technology for many types of visualization. Integrating the knowledge areas together provides a more cohesive base for the visualization. With 3D as a primitive, however, there is a better basis for visualizing metadata and information structures. This in turn enables better visualization and interaction with graphs and semantic networks, especially those built on standards and common protocols.

Day 2 of the workshop will focus on the confluence of all the above ideas. The goals are to produce a scope statement for this area of research, and potentially a CFP for a conference.