Meta-Information Visualization to Enhance the Common Operational Picture (MIVEC)

Decision-making in 21st century warfare environments is characterized by large amounts of complex information from a variety of individual and networked sensor systems that must be rapidly processed by the commander. Part of this complexity is due to meta-information, or, characteristics of information such as uncertainty, staleness, etc. that increase the decision-making burden. Knowledge regarding this meta-information, along with cognitively and perceptually based visualization methods, can be used to relieve the decision-maker's workload and encourage more battlespace-aware decisions. We therefore propose a process for developing Meta-Information Visualizations to Enhance the Common Operation Picture (MIVEC). This process consists of three steps. First, we will perform a cognitive task analysis across a set of case studies to develop a principled categorization of types and sources of information and meta-information, to identify meta-informational requirements, and to identify display elements in existing DoD systems. Second, we will design and prototype a software toolkit for augmenting incoming data with identified meta-information types and for rapidly creating new meta-information visualization methods and interfaces. Third, we will develop an evaluation methodology, including metrics of the effectiveness of each meta-information visualization technique in supporting performance and training. We will demonstrate feasibility of our approach for Phase II development.