The power of collaborative systems
The power of collaborative systems
In today’s military environment soldiers may be required to plan and conduct a broad variety of novel non-kinetic as well as conventional kinetic missions. The presence of cross-cultural human terrain adds layers of uncertainty to these tasks. For example, in Stability, Security, Transition, and Reconstruction (SSTR) missions, achieving the desired effects frequently involves changing both the attitudes and behaviors of several subpopulations, and success depends on leveraging the existing beliefs, values, and avenues of influence in these culturally diverse subpopulations. It is clear that soldiers would benefit greatly from computer-based support tools to help them accomplish these new and complex missions.
In order to be fully effective, such support tools must resolve a number of technical issues. These issues include enhancing the soldiers’ ability to: (1) make cogent observations and collect cultural data virtually from scratch; (2) use these data to identify the relevant subpopulations involved; (3) determine the cultural elements that differentiate subpopulations from one another at different levels of resolution; (4) identify central elements and map out interactions and overlapping memberships among different groups; and finally (5) use these data and analytical results in a practical decision modeling framework that supports rational planning and evaluation of alternative courses of action.
Our Integrated Social Network Decision Models (ISDM) R&D project is designed to address these technical issues and to develop a set of support tools that significantly improve the reliability of mission planning using sub-optimal data in cross-cultural environments. The ISDM concept is based on an innovative synthesis of three technologies. These technologies are: (1) Respondent Driven Sampling (RDS); (2) Cultural Consensus Theory (CCT); and (3) Decision Modeling, including Bayesian Influence Networks, Expected Utility, Value of Information, and Sensitivity Analysis. Our choice of these three technologies to be integrated in ISDM reflects the conviction that culturally aware decision making has to break with any lingering assumption that culture is a free-floating, monolithic abstraction. RDS grounds culture in individual minds connected to varying degrees by webs of social interaction with other minds; CCT identifies culturally divergent subpopulations within such networks, highlighting both shared and discrepant cultural elements. Influence diagrams show how ideas transmitted from one group to another may be tempered by assimilation into pre-existing knowledge structures, or amplified by synergistic inferences. Integrated within ISDM, the three technologies provide a roadmap of cultural potentiality that can be exploited for purposes of either stability or change by planners of Information Operations, SSTR missions, etc.
Home | About Us | Projects | News & Events | Papers | Contact Us
© 2007, Perceptronics Solutions, Inc. All rights reserved. | Web Site Design by Capital Idea Ventures, Inc.
