Collaborative Decision Making for Net-Centric Warfare in Time-Critical Situations Brad Goodman, Principal Investigator Problems:
Collaboration technologies focus on connecting people for information exchange, but not on managing the exchange or its vital contextual attributes. Important cues that guide collocated collaboration are either lacking or get lost in current collaborative environments, which require geographically distributed operators to work on complex joint missions by juggling over a dozen chat rooms. The result is confusion, overload, miscommunications, and delay.
Objectives:
The purpose of our project is to enhance the collaborative environment to reduce overload and miscommunication, while providing distributed team members with enriched real-time contextual cues. The cues help operators identify rapidly emerging collaborative threads, determine the origins and changing relevance of information, and help gain awareness of interpersonal connections.
Activities:
We will develop tailored, fielded prototypes of the enhanced collaborative environment. Feedback from experienced operators will serve to stress and critique the prototype so refinements can be made. Metrics for success include reduced overload (fewer windows), less time to detect emerging threads, greater awareness of who is doing what where, as well as sponsor acceptance, perceived usability, and buy-in.
Impact:
Our technology will reduce the number of distinct information streams (chat rooms) operators need to have on permanent display by providing summary cues to room activity levels or key participants. This will reduce operator overload and confusion, while enhancing their ability to manage collaboration and rapidly detect important emerging threads. These collaboration enhancements are directly based on documented difficulties in an Air Operations Center environment.
Approved for Public Release: 07-1595 Presentation [PDF]
Counterinsurgency (COIN) Sandbox for Decision Support (CISADS) Brian Tivnan, Principal Investigator
Problem
Counterinsurgency (COIN) operations require a flexible and adaptive force to compete against asymmetrical and adaptive adversaries. Given the complex dynamics of the COIN environment, the analytical and training communities, and ultimately tactical commanders in theater, require support tools to assess the potentially far-reaching implications of non-kinetic effects in COIN operations. Current force-on-force combat models have inherent limitations: (a) they do not represent non-kinetic effects reflected in COIN Operations; (b) they are predicated on prescribed doctrinal operations and cannot reflect the learning of an asymmetric, adaptive adversary; (c) they cannot support rapid prototyping; and (d) they are not available for tactical commanders in theater.
Objectives
This MOIE intends to leverage our experiences with rapidly prototyping models for our Sponsors and modeling socio-cultural features of Sponsor relevant situations, along with recent improvements in agent-based modeling frameworks and computational infrastructure, to create an analytical tool that represents these non-kinetic effects in a COIN environment. Because “civil considerations are often the most important factors” in COIN operations, we will model the Areas, Structures, Capabilities, Organizations, People, and Events (ASCOPE) within a selected Area of Operations to enable the investigation of socio-cultural dynamics such as:
Civilian sentiments toward Counterinsurgent and Stability Operations activities.
Civilian sentiment toward Coalition forces.
Civilian support of insurgents.
Networks involved with the insurgency (social, religious, supply, etc.)
Activities
We are adhering to a spiral development process as we mature this modeling capability, where the successful completion of each task will be evaluated by Subject Matter Experts for both technical and operational merit.
Task 1: Formulate the model in accordance with official sources (i.e., FM 3-24, JIEDDO, Army Lessons Learned and related work).
Task 2: Develop a prototype based upon the model formulation. Prototype will be independently verified against the model formulation.
Task 3: Extend the prototype to militarily relevant scales (e.g., a brigade-level scenario in the battle for Fallujah).
Task 4: Conduct a comprehensive design of experiments with a brigade-level scenario to reflect both actual as well as alternative dynamics in the battle for Fallujah.
Impacts
Our research will initially provide the analyst and training communities with an analytic support tool to allow experimentation with the impact of non-kinetic effects on different courses of action (COAs) in a selected scenario and begin to understand the ramifications of those COAs in a selected COIN environment. This capability could be used by U.S. Army TRADOC and the Marine Corps Combat Development Command as an artificial COIN world for experimenting on various dynamics of counterinsurgency operations. Our experiments will enhance our understanding of counterinsurgency dynamics and the potentially counterintuitive nature of the socio-cultural landscape of the COIN environment. An extension of our research is to provide tactical Commanders and staff with a decision-support tool to allow the investigation of the impact of non-kinetic effects on different COAs and facilitate an understanding how those non-kinetic effects impact the dynamics of the civilian populace within that AO.
Approved for Public Release: 08-0597
Presentation (PDF)
Ethnomethodology for Complex Technical Negotiation Jo Ann Brooks, Principal Investigator Problems:
Developing shared vocabularies and common processes, while accommodating multiple -- and often divergent -- stakeholder viewpoints and interests are problems common to information sharing and standards development. There is substantial need for applying what is known about the social dynamics of how groups form and create shared meaning to these and comparable problem domains.
Objectives:
We will investigate how a sociological approach called ethnomethodology facilitates complex technical negotiation. Ethnomethodology is the study of how people make sense and construct meaning together. Our primary objective comprises learning about ethnomethodology and focusing this knowledge on complex technical negotiation in the Information Assurance domain. A secondary objective involves understanding how ethnomethodology can be used to address information-sharing problems.
Activities:
We will leverage our collaborative relationship with experts from Bentley College to learn about how ethnomethodology has been used in technical environments. We will extend this knowledge through comparative case studies of communication in email archives of Information Assurance standards development. We will also explore how ethnomethods can provide useful implications for MITRE Information Sharing work.
Impact:
By understanding how to leverage ethnomethodological approaches, MITRE can be more effective in our role as an honest broker in situations where diverse stakeholders need to form communities of interest and negotiate agreements on complex engineering problems. Combining advanced social science approaches with advanced technical approaches increases MITRE's differentiated value and also benefits MITRE's standards development efforts.
Approved for Public Release: 08-0589 Presentation [PDF]
Evaluating Behavioral Indicators for Maritime Domain Awareness Robert Kobee, Principal Investigator Problems:
Daily monitoring of thousands of ships and associated cargo and passengers in the maritime domain -- U.S., coastal, open ocean, and foreign port regions -- is a difficult ongoing task. The United States needs a capability to identify potential threats in the maritime environment that is based on motion indicators of anomalous behavior by bad actors.
Objectives:
The objective of this MOIE is to develop a proof-of-concept capability to recognize anomalous behaviors in the maritime domain that helps relieve operator workload. This capability will leverage and demonstrate the effectiveness of integrating information that is accessible from multi-organizational sources
Activities:
We will collect data and develop techniques, such as a Bayes network, using Matlab to combine motion-based ship's actions and the contextual-based information to correctly identify ship as VOIs. This process will minimize false alarms, help users to understand the nature of the anomaly, and improve confidence in the decision by combining multiple indicators.
Impact:
This research can have a significant impact on the mission of maritime domain awareness operators. It will lay the groundwork for a family-of-systems test bed to investigate maritime, air, and ground situational awareness systems and process interactions. It will leverage the large body of ongoing work with which MITRE is involved.
Approved for Public Release: 08-0199
Improved BDA for Effective ISR Management Lewis Loren, Principal Investigator Problems:
Intelligence, Reconnaissance, and Surveillance (ISR) assets are stretched thin, and Battle Damage Assessment (BDA) often gets pushed to the bottom of the ISR deck. In conventional wars this situation will only worsen with the development of small diameter bombs, which will permit bomber pilots to prosecute more targets, thereby stretching ISR assets beyond the breaking point. In asymmetric wars, like Afghanistan, BDA diverts ISR assets from the crucial task of locating and identifying targets and is sometimes uninformative since the targets are often caves, so photographs reveal very little about the effects of prosecution.
Objectives:
Our objective is to provide actionable BDA in support of traditional ISR BDA by using link information as input to the Joint Munitions Effectiveness System to produce actionable information, and to determine how the Network Enabled Weapons can be incorporated. We will also identify measures of effectiveness that can provide independent sources of validation, in keeping with an Effects-Based Approach to Operations.
Activities:
We will work with the Network Enabled Weapons program, the Tactical Data Network SPO, and the Joint Munitions Effectiveness community and operational contacts at the 505th Training Squadron, AFC2ISRC, and numbered Air Forces to determine how this approach is best implemented. Beta versions will be made available to operators to elicit feedback and guide the research. We will also leverage data collection opportunities that can be used to verify system performance.
Impact:
This research will decrease the BDA tasking placed on ISR assets and will avoid near-term problems that will occur as small diameter bombs are employed operationally. If BDA requests to ISR are reduced, the turnaround time for the remaining requests should be decreased. Situational Awareness can be significantly increased by providing real-time BDA estimates for all targets. Dynamic re-tasking of ISR and strike assets can also be aided by the real-time BDA estimates.
Approved for Public Release: 07-1333
ISR Forensics Curtis Brown, Principal Investigator Problems:
Forensic analysis will become one of the future drivers of both exploitation tool development and multi-intelligence (multi-INT) data archives. To be successful in exploiting the ISR data in large multi-INT databases, forensics analysts will need to combine ground-moving target indicator data with data from other sources of intelligence and will require easy-to-use tools to access, navigate, and process it.
Objectives:
Our objective is to create visualization tools to support the forensic analysis of ISR data. These tools will provide a framework for exploring automation through the incorporation of advanced tracking technology.
Activities:
We will develop a set of tools that exploit geospatial and temporal data, and then apply the tools to synthetic ground truth data sets that we will generate. Advanced tracking technology, including Multiple Hypothesis Tracker traceback, will be developed and integrated to aid the analyst. We will document lessons learned and demonstrate the forensic environment at the Technology Symposium.
Impact:
We will make our exploitation tools available to analysts. Lessons learned will be fed back both to multi-INT database efforts as well as exploitation tool development efforts.
Approved for Public Release: 05-0200 Presentation [PDF]
Sensor Data and Analysis Framework Don Landing, Principal Investigator Problems:
Current querying techniques for archive and streaming data are insufficient by themselves to harmonize sensor inputs from large volumes of data. These two distinct architectures (push versus pull) have yet to be combined to meet the demands of a data-centric world. The input of sensor streaming data from multiple sensor types further complicates the problem.
Objectives:
The objective is to develop an integrated query capability that simultaneously accesses streaming and archive data sets from multiple sensor types. The research will design and test techniques for incorporating the pedigree of geospatial data and develop an approach that can scale while meeting response times.
Activities:
The objective is to develop an integrated query capability that simultaneously accesses streaming and archive data sets from multiple sensor types. The research will design and test techniques for incorporating the pedigree of geospatial data and develop an approach that can scale while meeting response times.
Impact:
This research will create an opportunity to transfer knowledge from academia to MITRE, which will allow us to better support our sponsors. The proposed framework will be an enabler for national and tactical management of sensor data. We will also enhance the Borealis Open Source project to help address our challenges.
Approved for Public Release: 06-0014 Presentation [PDF]
SezHoo: Using Reputation to Increase the Trustworthiness of Information Mark Kramer, Principal Investigator Problems:
Large-scale collaborations require mechanisms that facilitate trust, enforce behavioral norms, and provide accountability. Trust and reputation systems offer a promising approach; however, existing systems are oriented toward on-line goods markets and recommendation systems. We aim to create a more general model of trust involving organizations, people, short- and long-term transactions, and content quality.
Objectives:
Our objective is to design trust and reputation mechanisms that provide incentives for suppliers to declare accurately the quality of information they provide, encourage information consumers to accurately rate the information they consume, protect the diversity of views in the system and the providers of minority viewpoints, and resist unfair feedback and gaming behaviors.
Activities:
Our technical approach has two complementary parts. The theoretical portion, based in part on market theory, will create a general understanding of the issues of trust and reputation in information exchanges. The applied portion will be based on two or three case studies that will test and demonstrate our ideas, and will pave the way for technology transfer.
Impact:
Information quality is a central issue in a range of practical problems, including distributed intelligence gathering and analysis such as Local Eyes, collaboration environments such as wikis (e.g., MITREpedia), and reputation-based quality of service and service-level agreements. We will use these or similar examples as case studies for our approach.
Approved for Public Release: 06-1087 Presentation [PDF]
Tagged and Geotemporal Reporting (TAGR) Jay Crossler, Principal Investigator
Last Updated:05/05/2008 | ^TOP | 
