Visual Representation and Implementation of Culturally Significant Information for Enhanced Tactical Decision-making

This proposal is to extend into Phase II our development of a new system for Cultural Information and Value Visualization System (CIVVS). We are joined in this effort by subcontractor the University of California at Irvine (UCI) Department of Sociology with Principal Investigator Professor Rick Grannis. CIVVS provides new and powerful tools for analyzing, selecting, and visualizing critical cultural factors and applying them immediately in the context of military tactical planning. CIVVS integrates multi-dimensional visualization of culturally significant information with decision analytical modeling that imbeds cultural factors. In this way, CIVVS will enhance the quality and speed of tactical decision making in foreign, culturally-unknown and untried, and potentially hostile environments. Our proposed Phase II effort builds on our significant technical achievements in Phase I, which include a successful Proof-of-Concept Demonstration featuring execution of the key CIVVS workflow functions. Our proposed Phase II effort will deliver a complete prototype capable of visualizing and applying cultural information from heterogeneous information sources such as surveys, text document, knowledge bases, and social media. Our Phase II development will benefit from continuous utility and usability assessment by the Human Terrain System, the US Army"s proponent for developing and applying cultural knowledge to military planning and operations.