Robert J. Smillie, PhD, CPE

Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center - San Diego

Military commanders are regularly overwhelmed with the amount of data they are expected to integrate and understand during tactical missions. With the advances in technology (direct broadcast imagery, groupware, etc.) that accelerate the delivery of data, this problem is becoming more critical, e.g., during Desert Storm, the Marine Corps logged over 1.3 million email messages in under 100 hours. Currently, the command staffs, as well as the commanders are the information integrators and processors. The Command, Control, Communications, Computerization, and Intelligence (C4I) technology available to them is there to allow the retrieval of data from multiple, heterogeneous sources, and support the combining of that data into independent information streams, e.g., weather, topology, etc. The missing element in the C4I infrastructure is the capability to provide the commander and the commander's staff with understandable, knowledge-based information that supports effective decision making in an environment of uncertainty.

The Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center - San Diego (SSC-SD) is designing a decision-centered Combat Operations Center (DC-COC) for the Marine Corps. The DC-COC must enhance situation awareness, present information in innovative ways that enhance understanding and decision making, be consistent with the decision maker's cognitive model, and highlight uncertain information. A decision-centered approach begins with the decisions that must be made and works backwards to identify the information and support necessary to make those decisions. The DC-COC effort started with identifying users' needs and job requirements through a cognitive task analysis (CTA), extensive field observation, and two workshops on battlefield uncertainty.

Design of a DC-COC is first and foremost a human performance issue. Effective command and control may spell the difference between success and failure on the battlefield, where success involves staying inside the enemy's decision cycle and can be measured by reduced own-force attrition. Intermediate measures of success include reduced decision time and improved decision quality. It is anticipated that advanced COC design concepts may reduce requirements for co-located personnel through distributed information management, shared situation awareness, and improved information visualization. The key technological questions are:

• Will cognitive task analysis serve as a useful technique to define a naturalistic decision making interface concept for command and control?

• Can human information processing and cognitive theory be used to design information presentation methods that are congruent with the cognitive representation and processing of that information?

• Can integrated presentation techniques be used to improve the level of understanding (awareness) of the tactical data, particularly when those data contain varying levels and sources of uncertainty?

Completed tasks include:

• CTA of the Regimental COC to (a) identify decision requirements and barriers to effective command and control; (b) identify the lines of communication and information flow, and (c) determine the range of judgments and decisions made during COC operations;
• Taxonomy for battlefield uncertainty where uncertainty can be considered as consisting of two separate dimensions: Sources (i.e., information may be missing, unreliable, ambiguous or conflicting, or complex) and Levels (i.e., uncertainty may occur due to raw data, due to knowledge [from which inferences may be drawn], and due to problems in understanding [synthesizing inferences into predictions of the future, diagnosing and explaining events, or identifying critical battle focal points]);
• Organizing principles and approaches for presenting and interacting with battlefield information;
• Initial application of an advanced interface for tactical information;
• Concept for developing and assessing command post situation awareness tools; and
• Performance results on the role of graphical versus textual support of tactical positions uncertainty.