Intelligent Aided Communication (iaC) in a Command and Control Environment

During the past several decades many important incremental improvements have been made in command and control (C2) and decision making theories, practices, and supporting technologies; however, true innovation has often been lacking. Major problems remain that hinder revolutionary improvements to military C2 concepts and practices. Two particularly troublesome problems are information overload and a focus on individuals/small teams versus larger groups within an information environment. To address these and related problems, Pacific Science & Engineering Group (PSE) is developing a new human-centered concept referred to as intelligent aided Communication (iaC)[copyrighted]. The iaC concept facilitates more efficient and effective communication and collaboration among users and systems by selectively employing context-aware user profiles (e.g., profiles based on C2 roles and responsibilities, information requirements, user preferences, etc.) and software agents to manage many of the mundane tasks associated with information exchange and alerting that warfighters perform manually today. Similarly, other iaC agents use this same context awareness and user profiles approach to tailor information organization and presentation for the individual warfighter. This paper and presentation will describe the iaC concept in more detail and outline how iaC can form the foundation for more sophisticated, larger-scale efforts to develop intelligent command centers and technologies. Presented at the International Command and Control Research and Technology Symposium (10th), ICCRTS'05, held in McLean, VA on 13-16 Jun 2005. The original document contains color images.