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

The success of U.S. Army"s military and SSTR missions often hinges on the ability to understand HSCB dynamics of the theater of operations. More broadly, understanding of different socio-cultural terrains is the key to US national security. The costs of cultural ignorance or miscommunication--be it lost lives, major political mistakes and embarrassment, or lost opportunities and profits--are too large and too frequent to keep ignoring cultural differences. To promote rapid acquisition and effective use of relevant HSCB knowledge, we propose VISTA (Visual analytics for Intuitive Socio-cultural Terrain Awareness), which provides: (1) tool sets for visualization and analyses of HSCB data; (2) intuitive, clear, interactive representations of HSCB data; (3) automated analytics and translation of HSCB insights to decision-support products for different operational planning levels; and (4) evaluation of metrics to explain effects in relevant operational context. VISTA integrates two unique frameworks: (A) spatial-temporal visualization and navigation of latent dimensions of HSCB terrains; and (B) 4D data model of HSCB systems, scenarios, and interventions. It utilizes converging research findings from brain sciences, human psychology, psycho-linguistics, and advanced computing to operationalize the socio-cultural system-of-systems theory into clear, compact models of information processing, cognition, behaviors, and societal and trans-national effects.