Model-Centered Tactical Group Decision Analysis System

At the center of today's military command and control operations is the need for distributed real-time collaborative tactical planning and decision-making associated with rapidly changing events as well as with response to asymmetric warfare and counter-terrorist operations. Of particular concern is collaboration across services, agencies and organizations, or in operations involving coalition partners dispersed in different geographical locations. Associated with this critical need is the problem of aiding and enhancing the capabilities for tactical decision making by such distributed collaborative groups. It is clear that computer support systems provide the logical path, but to date no fully satisfactory solution has emerged, in large part because current solutions have focused primarily on the decision process and not on the decision product. Our proposed solution returns the computer support process to a rigorous, model-based decision analytical focus that has previously proved successful, and augments this basic approach with the latest research in cognitive decision aiding -- including influence diagrams, mental models and critical thinking concepts. In particular, our technical approach builds on a seminal DARPA-sponsored R&D project on computer-based group decision aiding performed earlier by Perceptronics Solutions personnel. The results of this innovative research that computer-aided structuring of the group decision processes around sound decision analytic models helps bring the group to convergence and increases the depth of its problem analysis by insuring that more time is spent in quantitative interaction. We also plan to leverage the recent multi-million dollar DARPA investment in Groove infrastructure and tools to provide a readymade, Web based collaborative environment for the proposed system.