Team Knowledge Interoperability in Maritime Interdiction Operations

Navy operations such as Maritime Interdiction Operations (MIOs) are increasingly composed of distributed assets that interact and collaborate over great distances. Not only must fielded assets coordinate information and actions, but reach-back assets that perform analysis functions play an increasingly large and common role. The collaboration tools that are in use today fail to meet many of the collaboration and cognition needs of users. In terms of recent models of team collaboration and knowledge interoperability (Warner, Letsky, & Cowen, 2005), these tools offer little explicit support for knowledge building, problem solving, or consensus building. We proposed to develop a tool called HERMES. The communication-collaboration tool will support team situation awareness and incorporate mixed-media messages and explicit design structures to support collaboration and knowledge interoperability within the MIO task environment. The tool is based on SLATE wireless collaboration technology. Along the way of developing the HERMES tool, the project will delve into the cognitive/collaborative activities of MIO team members in order to better understand these activities and how to better support them. In particular, the requirement of providing explicit interface designs to support collaboration will entail research into the macro-cognition and knowledge interoperability needs of these users.