An Expanded Toolkit for Modeling Sensemaking, Knowledge Creation, Knowledge Management, and Decision Making in Military C2 Teams and Organizations

An expanded modeling toolkit will be developed for explicitly representing the sensemaking, knowledge creation, knowledge management, and decision making processes of military C2 teams and organizations within the joint synthetic battlespace. this toolkitwill offer three unique advantages over existing modeling tools: - The toolkit extends the cognitive systems engineering and modeling state-of-the art to the team and organizational level where most higher-level C2 decision making occurs, - The toolkit captures the non-linear/emergent aspects of collaborative sensemaking that shapes the decision making process ina complex and evolving operational environment, and - The toolkit provides for the explicit modeling of knowledge as a contextually- valued commodity that is created and managed within the military C2 process.To accomplish this, a multidisciplinary research team from EBR will (1) synthesize relevant theories and constructs from five prominent social science frameworks into a high-level description of the sensemaking, knowledge creation, knowledge management,and decision making processes of a C2 team/organization; (2) extend existing congnitive systems engineering and modeling paradigms to provide a knowledge-centric framework for modeling these processes; (3) expand existing cognitive task analysis methods tosupport this modeling framework; and (4) demonstrate the resulting tools in an operational Air Force setting. The expanded modeling toolkit will provide the Department of Defense with a unique capability for modeling decision making teams and organizations within the synthetic battlespace environment. Specifically, this toolkit translates relevant cognitive andsocial/organizational research theory into practical C2 modeling tools that can be used in support of the Air Force's Joint Synthetic Battlespace (JSB), the Army's Joint Virtual Battlespace (JVB), and the Joint Forces command's Joint Simulation System(JSIMS). Using this toolkit, modelers can build synthetic C2 representations that are more capable or yeilding explicit insight as to how information technology, training, and organizational design influence the quality, timeliness, and reliability ofknowledge management and decision making in a complex, evolving operational environment. Subsequest adaptation of this modeling toolkit to the civilian sector is envisioned to provide state and local governments with the simulation modeling tools neededto refine their C2 concepts ofr coordinating counter-terrorism and consequence management operations among multiple agencies and departments.