A Model-Based Index of Cognitive Fightability for Warrior Systems

Current methods to assess system effectiveness often require the development of prototype systems and costly evaluation studies. Several heuristic approaches exist to support technology selection and implementation services, however a scientifically-basedprocess is needed that will consider the functionality that new technology provides, the missions that these systems will be applied to, and the operators that use them. Cognitive Fightability Index Tool (CogFIT) when fully developed in Phase II willprovide a novel functionality to model and analyze the impact of a system on the cognitive performance of warfighters. The proposed research builds on our Phase I CogFIT prototype that successfully computed cognitive fightability as a measure of thecongruence between three factors: the mission, which represents what tasks must be performed; the cognitive abilities and capacities of human warfighters, which represents who performs the tasks; and the design of the system, which represents how toperform the required tasks. In Phase II, we intend to extend this capability, incorporating advanced multi-objective optimization algorithms to provide additional diagnostic capabilities. In addition to calculating cognitive fightability, optimizationalgorithms are used to generate specific recommendations for organizational change intended to enhance the system utility and increase cognitive fightability.