Multi-Agent Simulation and Causal Model (MSCM) System for Enhancing Team Cognitive Readiness

This proposal id to develop a"Multi-Agent Simulation and Causal Model (MSCM) System for Enhancing Team Cognitive Readiness."The MSCM system will include methods, metrics, visualizations, and interventions for optimizing team mental model effectiveness and convergence. The proposed work integrates cutting edge technology from several areas: Consensus Analysis for statistically rigorous measurement of coherence and identification of population subgroups, multi-agent simulation based on distributed constraint optimization problems with varying types of uncertainty; Bayesian decision models for diagnosing, modeling, and representing complex states (e.g., team mental models) and for evaluating interventions, graphical visualization for clustering, causal inference and prediction, and dimensions of uncertainty, and advanced survey and cognitive task analysis methods, to quickly identify knowledge, skill, and other performance components in a representative set of tasks. More specifically, the proposed MSCM system will incorporate three innovative functional elements; each includes a modeling component, a measurement component, and relevant visualization techniques; they are Team Cognitive Readiness Model (TCRM), Team Mental Model (TMM), and Multi-Agent Team Simulation (MATS). Phase I will combine elements the first two elements above to produce a complete first-pass MSCM System for team mental model evaluation, visualization, and improvement.