Enabling Representation of Meta-Information in Net-Centric Environments (ERMINE)

We propose to develop and evaluate generalizable techniques for Enabling Representation of Meta-Information in Net-Centric Environments (ERMINE). The proposed ERMINE effort represents a fundamental contribution to research in meta-information portrayal that will generalize across domains. Under Phase I, we demonstrated the feasibility of the proposed approach to developing and evaluating meta-information representations. We performed a Work Domain Analysis to identify the potential impacts of meta-information on decision-making and define cross-domain avenues for research. We performed a scoped literature review, and designed an extensible knowledge repository, to inform our Phase I and future experiment design efforts. We demonstrated meta-information portrayal strategies, developed a specific evaluation plan including a detailed pilot study, and executed that pilot study. Under Phase II, we propose to: (1) extend and refine the WDA to capture additional complexities associated with cyberwarfare and to ensure generalizability across tasks, contexts, and domains; (2) rapidly prototype and empirically evaluate new meta-information visualization methods; (3) build a publicly accessible, community-driven Web site to characterize meta-information research and encourage collaboration among stakeholders; and (4) execute experiments to expand our basic understanding of human reasoning about and perception of meta-information, as well as to support the development of cross-domain meta-information portrayal methods. BENEFIT: We see considerable promise in the commercial application of our approach to developing meta-information visualization techniques, particularly in the financial industry, where decision-making incorporates risk management and the evaluation of meta-informational attributes of specific investment choices to develop coherent and effective strategies. We also see applications for meta-information visualization methods in Federal, State, and Local Government emergency response systems in homeland security scenarios where meta-information critically affects decision-making. In addition, we plan to transition specific meta-information visualization techniques to our BNet® suite of commercial products as we begin to target vertical markets (e.g., business intelligence).