4.6 The Waterfall Model

This is a model proposed in ^[17] which "has been widely used in the UK defence data fusion community but has not been significantly adopted elsewhere" [ ^[3]]. The basic structure is shown in Fig. 4.8.

Figure 4.8: The waterfall model.

The model superficially appears to have many elements in common with the single-sensor processing chain of Fig. 4.1. However, this is an artefact of the simple diagrammatic representation. The sensing level in the waterfall model spans several sensors. Also note the situation assessment stage, this brings the model roughly into correspondence with the first three levels of the JDL model. As observed in [ ^[3]], the model lacks an explicit use of feedback corresponding to level 4 of the JDL model and is thus less general. The reason for discussing it here is that it provided one of the main ingredients for the Omnibus model described next.