A Configurable Object-Oriented Expert System to Embody Cultural (Awareness) Models for Simulation and Semi-Autonomous Forces

One of the biggest problems faced by both military and non-military personnel in planning and conducting Operations Other Than War (OOTW) and Law Enforcement (LE) is a lack of cultural awareness. A lack of cultural awareness in OOTW causes misplanning and misinterpretation in the areas of economics, politics, religion, and historical events. The objective of the proposed work is to produce a design and a prototype which merges key expert system technology with advanced object technology to provide an object-oriented expert system which can embody cultural awareness models in a flexible, adaptable, and robust form. This expert system can serve as the core "intelligence" for SAF which can be included in both Monte Carlo and distributed interactive simulations to provide appropriate responses and interpretation of events based on cultural models. We propose to couple a hybrid form of expert system with Aurora Simulation's Object Model Kernel. The Object Model Kernel will represent all expert system knowledge as object models and enable advanced manipulation of these object models including run-time loading from files or databases, run-time editing, and transfer from other applications. A single expert system could represent a single, multiple, or an aggregation of entities; or be used as a decision aid for planning and event interpretation. Anticipated Benefits: A number of benefits will be realized through the proposed system including, improved fidelity in simulations and exercises involving OOTW/LE; commonality among the cultural model representations used in simulation; reduced maintenance and porting effort to adapt this capability from one system to another; and generally improved planning and execution of OOTW/LE based on cultural awareness.