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

Prior network management systems such as SNMP, NETCONF, and proprietary network management systems use static community strings and proprietary vendor monitoring without governance-chain-preserving authority attribution, whereas the present primitive produces governance-credentialed health observations with an authority chain. Prior device management platforms produce platform-internal log records with platform-operator-determined retention, whereas the present primitive produces governance-chain-preserving health lineage with deterministic reconstruction.

Prior platforms confine device records to a single vendor's management environment, whereas the present primitive supports cross-authority health interoperability through taxonomy translation. Prior platforms do not integrate governance-chain-integrity health monitoring or supply-chain provenance health monitoring with operational health, and do not integrate composite cross-domain health assessment combining device, network, governance, and supply-chain categories through a single architectural mechanism, whereas the present primitive integrates these and produces composite cross-domain health assessment. Prior platforms require centralized management servers, 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.