Knowledge Flow in Command and Control (C2)

Although incremental improvements have been made in command and control and decision making theories, practices, and supporting technologies over the past several decades, true innovation has been lacking. Three major problem areas exist that preclude revolutionary progress in military command and control, i.e., information overload, troubling gaps in our understanding of human information processing and decision making, and an unbalanced focus on individuals and small teams vice larger groups and the with which they interact. The proposed work in this SBIR Phase I will begin to address all three areas in order to pave the way for the development of an intelligent command center that is aware of its human symbiots' needs, capabilities, and limitations. To the lay the groundwork for more sophisticated, larger-scale work toward an intelligent, aware command center, Phase I work will identify, describe, and model cognitive tasks and information flow within a representative state-of-the-art command center - in this case, an Aegis CIC. Based on this information and resultant model, innovative displays/interfaces and other advanced technologies will be proposed along with metrics able to measure the impact of any proposed changes to command center organization, processes, or technologies.