Architecture Specification and Validation Tools for Designing Command and Control (C2) Systems.

Modasco proposes an innovative, rule-based approach to prototyping advanced C2 systems.This technology specifies entities and entity relationships, such as hierarchy and association, in a C4ISR-compliant database and then specify and validate prototype C2 architectures using these entities as system building blocks.It is a significant improvement over the current way Colored Petri Nets (CPNs) are used, since it provides the designer with a palette of validated entities and entity relationships from which a system can be designed.It provides a simple way to build and use custom icons representing the validated entities, thus improving the visual, mnemonic and demonstrative appeal of the graphical system design.Since the entity definitions (icon, attributes, association and hierarchy rules) are declared in a database, the modification and extension of existing architecture palettes, and the development of new project-specific palettes, can be performed withoutmodifying the design tools themselves.The proposed methodology interfaces with LEdit, a graphical editor developed by the Air Force. It extends LEdit's usefulness for prototyping C2 architectures by enforcing pre-declared operational and system constraints.This methodology has broad commercial appeal for systems re-engineering and will improve the way military worth is evaluated in a new generation of war-gaming models.Decrease the development time and cost for prototyping new systems.The proposed software tools are directly applicable to the design and analysis of commercial and military processes including information systems, healthcare, economic forecasting, software and hardware.