Advanced Technology Master Caution Panel (ATMCP): Tracking Task Status by Monitoring Information Technology (IT) Resources

Computers are increasingly becoming a part of society's everyday life and can cause a wide variety of impacts when they fail. For example, during a military exercise, Expeditionary Force Experiment (EFX) 98, it was found that operators were losing hours of work and data because they were unaware that essential systems had failed. This illustrated the need for a system that provided system situation awareness (SA) to the operator that rapidly disseminated information and responded quickly to connectivity and system failures. To fulfill this need, we created the Advanced Technology Master Caution Panel (ATMCP); analogous to an aircraft master caution panel. This system offers a unique approach to providing system SA that allows the operators to workaround system failures by mapping information technology (IT) resources to crew tasks as a method of monitoring task status. ATMCP offers unlimited flexibility and can be applied to multiple domain areas.