Ongoing naval operations are characterized by rapidly mutating, asymmetric threats and an ever quickening battle tempo. Networked information tools such as FORCEnet and WebCOP show tremendous promise for providing warfighters vistas of real-time, mission-relevant, battlefield knowledge to counter these threats. But simply presenting and sharing information is not sufficient to enable networked warfighters to comprehend how changing events impact their plans. Pacific Science & Engineering (PSE) proposes to maximize the impact of networked information by developing an integrated suite of collaboration tools to support operational planning teams. This suite of tools is called FORCEnavigator. FORCEnavigator is specifically focused on solving the critical problems of 1) understanding and resolving competing constraints on resources, and 2) maintaining tight congruence across the changes to plans that inevitably occur. PSE has the scientific expertise and decision support development experience, coupled with access to expert military users, to integrate emerging cognitive science concepts in collaboration and knowledge interoperability into an effective and efficient collaboration solution. This proposal lays out the elements of the design of such a system, and it details the tasks necessary to develop a concept prototype of it.
Benefit: The output of this Phase I effort will be a concept prototype of a network-enabled tool for supporting the agile planning and resource allocation requirements for maintaining domain awareness across an array of networked warfighters and operational planning team members. Specifically, the FORCEnavigator concept is designed to improve situation awareness and collaboration among team members working in and with the Theater Maritime Fusion Center (TMFC). FORCEnavigator has firm foundations in the cognitive science of collaboration and knowledge interoperability. FORCEnavigator provides a suite of interlocking, networked displays that focus on providing three key capabilities for enhancing and maintaining tightly coupled shared situation awareness: 1) multiple shared displays for visualizing plans, 2) dynamic visual linking of information across plan displays to promote understanding, and 3) a linked change alerting system for highlighting changes to plans and identifying their effects on plans. These capabilities will reside in a networked tool whose benefits will be to enhance the maintenance of shared situation over time and facilitate coordination throughout and across teams to increase team agility and effective resource allocation of shared assets.
Keywords: Collaboration, Collaboration, knowledge management, human systems, Network Technology, Planning, forcenet, knowledge interoperability, Situation Awareness, maritime domain awareness
