Integrating Decision Support and Knowledge Capture for Crisis Operations

Stottler Henke proposes an innovative approach to supporting crisis response operations that will allow for the amassing and exploitation of lessons learned during the resolution of previous incidents while simultaneously providing an advanced situational awareness capability. To accomplish these goals, we must necessarily address the fundamental challenge of knowledge capture since much recent research into the failures of various knowledge management initiatives highlights the fact that it is difficult, even in military organizations, to motivate personnel to codify their knowledge for the greater good. In recognition of this fact, the proposed Athena system will be designed so as to provide immediate benefits to the user that significantly outweigh the effort they expend. In particular, Athena will utilize the incremental description of an incident and its response to retrieve previous related cases as well as provide context-aware information retrieval, dissemination across the organization, and monitoring that can cut through information overload and thereby reduce cognitive burdens. Captured knowledge will not only benefit future crisis resolution, but also provides valuable content for scenario-based trainers. Phase I development of a limited prototype will provide a foundation for the complete implementation of Athena in Phase II and its commercialization.