Expeditionary Oblong Mezzanine

Abstract

This research explores how advanced collaboration tools might improve current operational environments within military and government organizations. Currently, military and government organizations collaborate via in-person communications and brief situational awareness using static and time-late information by sharing PowerPoint presentations. Two emerging technologies, the Emergency Operations Center in a Box (EOC in a Box) and Oblong Mezzanine, offer innovative methods to create a collaborative assessment environment, even in disadvantaged intermittent latency (DIL) environments. EOC in a Box offers rapid communications and networking infrastructure, and can be setup within hours of initial need. Oblong Mezzanine offers an advanced collaboration environment as seen in the movies Minority Report and Iron Man 3, where gestural accommodations enable new forms of collaboration with high definition graphics. Development in 2014 showed that these two capabilities could be married to create a rapidly deployable expeditionary capability to support nuanced and high-end collaboration, command and control, and data investigation. The purpose of this thesis is to determine if the Oblong Mezzanine coupled with the EOC in a Box technology is useful in an emergent situation. This thesis examines Mezzanine-to-Mezzanine and Mezzanine-to-other collaborative appliances in low bandwidth and austere environments.