Composite Fleet Health Assessment

Mechanism

The mechanism begins at the per-device tier, where a supply-chain provenance integrity monitor attests device and firmware authenticity. A device authenticity attestation evaluator produces observations of continuously-valid, expired, revoked, or never-attested authenticity status. A firmware integrity chain monitor tracks firmware updates through the authorized-update-authority chain. A physically-unclonable-function challenge-response monitor produces observations of PUF-response consistency. A software bill of materials attestation verifier validates the device's component inventory. A tamper-evident seal monitor produces observations of physical seal status, and an authorized-service-provider history recorder produces observations of authorized maintenance, repair, and component-replacement events. Each observation is governance-credentialed and recorded in the supply-chain-health lineage recorder.

A fleet health aggregator consumes the per-device and per-agent health observations and produces fleet-wide and infrastructure-wide health assessments. A health-observation aggregator gathers the per-device and per-agent observations; a fleet-health computation engine produces fleet-level health indicators including availability rate, mean-time-between-failures, degradation trends, and cascade-risk indicators; a health-observation emission interface produces fleet-level health observations consumable by authorized consumers; and a fleet-health lineage recorder records each aggregation. The fleet-level observations are governance-credentialed.

A cross-domain composite health assessor combines device, agent, mesh, governance, and supply-chain categories into composite cross-domain health assessment. Disclosed composite health patterns include a device-plus-mesh composite, in which device health and mesh-communication health combine to indicate overall operational capacity; a device-plus-governance composite, in which device health and governance-chain integrity combine to indicate authority-weighted operational readiness; a device-plus-supply-chain composite, in which device operational health and authenticity attestation combine to indicate trustworthiness; a fleet-plus-environmental composite, in which fleet health and environmental exposure combine to indicate fleet resilience; and a cross-agency composite, in which multiple authorities' health observations combine through N-party aggregation. A forecasting-kernel integration produces failure-prediction forecasts, and a cascade-propagation integration produces health-triggered cascade projections.

Operating Parameters

The PUF tier is parameterized by the challenge-response monitor's evaluation of PUF-response consistency. The supply-chain tier is parameterized by the device authenticity attestation evaluator's status categories of continuously-valid, expired, revoked, or never-attested authenticity, and by the firmware integrity chain monitor's tracking of firmware updates through the authorized-update-authority chain. The SBOM tier is parameterized by the software bill of materials attestation verifier carried in device lineage.

Tamper-evident monitoring is parameterized by the tamper-evident seal monitor's observations of physical seal status. The fleet-health computation engine is parameterized by the health-level indicators it produces, including availability rate, mean-time-between-failures, degradation trends, and cascade-risk indicators, together with the governance-policy-defined composite pattern selected by the cross-domain composite health assessor.

Health-driven responses are produced by a health-driven degradation controller, which produces graceful-degradation responses including load shedding, derating, and replacement coordination. A fault-localization and diagnostic mechanism identifies root causes of detected health degradation, and a predictive-maintenance and end-of-life management mechanism produces governance-credentialed maintenance projections.

Alternative Embodiments

One embodiment produces a device-plus-supply-chain composite, in which device operational health and authenticity attestation combine to indicate trustworthiness. A second embodiment produces a device-plus-governance composite, in which device health and governance-chain integrity combine to indicate authority-weighted operational readiness. A third embodiment produces a cross-agency composite, in which multiple authorities' health observations combine through N-party aggregation, supporting multi-party health-authority approval.

A further embodiment produces a fleet-plus-environmental composite, in which fleet health and environmental exposure combine to indicate fleet resilience. Another embodiment supports zero-trust infrastructure deployment, in which every device continuously attests authenticity rather than relying on network-perimeter security, and firmware-integrity-gated operation, in which devices refuse operation upon detected firmware tampering. A further embodiment supplies supply-chain verification enabling buyers to validate authenticity of purchased devices through governance-credentialed attestations.

Composition with Other Primitives

Composite fleet health composes with the cascade-propagation primitive through health-triggered cascade initiation: a cascade-propagation integration produces health-triggered cascade projections, and fleet-level health observations propagate to authorized consumers, which may admit them and adjust their operations accordingly.

Composition with the marketplace primitive proceeds through health-commodity exchange, so that fleet-level health observations may serve as inputs to marketplace participation. Composition with the matched-pair settlement primitive proceeds through health-service settlement, and composition with the N-party coordination primitive proceeds through multi-party health-authority approval.

Composition with the capability envelope proceeds through health-derating of capability, so that detected health degradation constrains the capability available to a device or agent. Composition with the shared environmental world view supplies a health-observation substrate, and composition with the device and component embodiments proceeds through device and component health sensing.

Distinction from Prior Art

Network management systems such as SNMP, NETCONF, and vendor-specific network management are organized around static community strings and vendor-defined monitoring taxonomies, whereas the present primitive is organized around governance-credentialed health observations carrying an authority chain. Device management platforms are organized around platform-internal log records with platform-operator-determined retention, whereas the present primitive produces governance-chain-preserving health lineage with deterministic reconstruction.

Platforms organized around a single vendor's management environment scope device records to that environment, whereas the present primitive supports cross-authority health interoperability through taxonomy translation. The present primitive integrates governance-chain-integrity health monitoring and supply-chain provenance health monitoring with operational health, and produces composite cross-domain health assessment combining device, network, governance, and supply-chain categories through a single architectural mechanism. Architectures organized around a centralized management server concentrate health observation at that server, whereas the present primitive distributes health observation through the governed mesh.

Worked Examples

Consider a fleet of distributed infrastructure controllers participating through the marketplace primitive. Each controller produces per-device health observations: PUF-response consistency from its physically-unclonable-function challenge-response monitor, SBOM attestation verification, and tamper-evident seal status from sealed enclosure monitoring. The fleet health aggregator consumes these and the fleet-health computation engine produces fleet-level health indicators including availability rate, mean-time-between-failures, degradation trends, and cascade-risk indicators. When a firmware integrity chain monitor detects firmware-update anomalies, the firmware-integrity-gated operation embodiment causes affected devices to refuse operation pending remediation, and the health-driven degradation controller produces graceful-degradation responses including load shedding and derating. The fleet-level health observation is consumable by authorized consumers through health-commodity exchange.

Consider a fleet of unmanned ground vehicles supporting a critical-infrastructure inspection mission. Per-device health observations include PUF-response consistency, firmware integrity chain status, tamper-evident seal status, and device authenticity attestation. The fleet health aggregator produces a device-plus-supply-chain composite, in which device operational health and authenticity attestation combine to indicate trustworthiness, together with cascade-risk indicators. The cascade-propagation integration produces health-triggered cascade projections, which propagate to authorized consumers that may admit them. Throughout, the fleet-health lineage recorder and supply-chain-health lineage recorder record each observation, assessment, and aggregation in the governance-chain lineage field, enabling deterministic reconstruction for post-mission audit.

Disclosure Scope

This disclosure covers the supply-chain provenance integrity monitor spanning device authenticity attestation, firmware integrity chain monitoring, PUF challenge-response consistency, SBOM attestation, tamper-evident seal status, and authorized-service-provider history; the fleet health aggregator and its fleet-health computation engine producing availability rate, mean-time-between-failures, degradation trends, and cascade-risk indicators; the cross-domain composite health assessor and its disclosed composite patterns; and the composition interfaces with the cascade-propagation, marketplace, matched-pair settlement, N-party coordination, capability envelope, and shared environmental world view primitives. Application domains include defense, civilian critical-infrastructure, distributed infrastructure, autonomous vehicle, robotics, and sensor-network deployments, and any other population whose operation requires governance-credentialed aggregate health.

The composite fleet health primitive is disclosed in U.S. Provisional Application No. 64/049,409 as part of the health monitoring primitive, and the structural features described herein, fleet health aggregation, governance-credentialed fleet-level health indicators, cross-domain composite health assessment, and composition with the cascade-propagation and marketplace primitives, are presented as the disclosed embodiment rather than as bounds on the underlying primitive's scope across alternative population classes and credentialing roots.