PolARES: A Recognition-based Crisis Decision System

Crisis decision-making is difficult and error-prone because it involves time-urgency, physical and emotional stress, chaotic conditions, and poor data availability/quality. This SBIR project will investigate, develop, and deploy a web-based software system (called PolARES) that supports key decisions for crisis management and battlefield applications. This system will produce a revolutionary improvement in decision performance for both experienced and novice decision makers. Successful crisis decision-making employs a psychology termed recognition-primed decision-making, a method that uses limited event observations to force quick recognition of an analogous scenario from a knowledge base. The PolARES decision system will support rapid decision-making in battlefield, emergency, and disaster situations. PolARES will include an extensive relational database of decision scenarios: event/decision pairs tailored to a target decision maker and decision space. PolARES will employ an advanced artificial intelligence algorithm to lead the decision maker through a limited set of questions to a rapid choice of a stored scenario. The tool will then adapt the base scenario to actual event conditions. A feasibility prototype demonstrated PolARES’ potential for chemical emergency response in Phase I of this SBIR. In Phase 2, PolARES will be applied to tactical military decision-making and other crisis decision environments.