Knowledge Flow Mesh and its Dynamics: A Decision Support Environment / 13th ICCRTS, "C2 for Complex Endeavors"

Abstract

The exciting advances in modern communications and networking ability have spawned a revolution in decision support systems within the greater network centric framework. Note the ongoing development and operational use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in the Global War on Terror and the geographically distributed C2 environment. Sensor saturation and the maturation of mobile technology has advanced at rate in which the current crop of decision and sense making technology has failed to pace against. This leads to one of the most interesting questions pertaining to the current field of decision support systems: Which one is best suited for today’s rapidly adapting and evolving network centric tactical situations? In this paper we introduce the concept of knowledge flow mesh dynamics within a decision support environment, which we argue is the logical heir to a new type of decision support system as seen through the network centric lens. Using the ongoing work by the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) and United States Special Operations Command Tactical Network Topology (TNT) Field Experimentation as a framework for exploration, we offer a systems approach to identifying those criteria which form the basis for the new decision support system. It is our goal that this model be incorporated in future versions of the NPS TNT Field Experiments for validation.