Requirements%20for%20Standards%20

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Requirements for Standards Commonality with
Regard to Knowledge Based Systems for Coalition
Operations
Alice M. Mulvehill Ted Kral BBN
Technologies BBN Technologies amm_at_bbn.com tkra
l_at_bbn.com
April 2002
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Issues to be Addressed

• How standards have been applied in the
  development of
• large decision support systems to date.
• The lessons learned.

• The degree and type of standardization required
  to support Coalition Operations.

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Observations Case Studies

• ARPI (ARPA Rome Planning Initiative)
• JTF-ATD (Joint Task Force Advanced Technology
  Demonstration)
• ACOA (Adaptive Courses of Action)
• JWIDs (Joint Warrior Interoperability
  Demonstration)

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ARPI

• Emphasis on mixed-initiative planning
• Standards
• Development of a common environment for
  experimentation
• Technical Integration Experiments (TIE)
• Integrated Feasibility Demonstrations (IFD)
• Common domain
• Development of a Common Plan Representation

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JTF-ATD

• Focused on the use of a common schema
• Standards
• Developed a distributed planning environment
  using
• planning cells called Anchor Desks
• - CORBA
• - web based object servers
• - common plan representation (common plan
  object)
• Standards were developed and enforced through
  the JTF-ATD
• reference architecture
• Extensive usage of training and experimentation
  via
• demonstrations and bootcamps (concentrated
  training)

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JTF Reference Architecture
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The ACOA Environment

• The initial focus was to be able to rapidly
  adapt the COA
• (Course of Action) to changing situations.

• ACOA is based on a user-centric, iterative
  development philosophy

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The Cooperation Continuum
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Terminological Evolution
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Standardization Approach
Common or Shared

• architecture
• plan representation
• planning process
• hardware
• users
• programming language
• terminology

Commonality is more important over
time Commonality is less important over time
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Special Needs of Coalition Teams

• Cognitive issues associated with culture
• training
• terminology
• operational concepts
• planning process

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Using Ontologies

• Multinational coalition teams will require the
  establishment of some
• standard operating ontology
• Ontology mapping tools will be needed to
  facilitate entry of
• new coalition members at varying levels of
  participation and trust

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Forming Coalitions

• JWID as a case study for coalition planning
• What is the role of similarity in team
  formation?

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Joint Warrior Interoperability Experiments (JWID)
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Technology Used in JWID

• WWW
• Collaborative planning tools
• - whiteboards
• - shared applications
• - on-line chat
• Coalition issues
• - several countries formed a group early
• - one country was a late joiner

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Observations from JWID

• The following factors affect interoperability and
  distributed collaborative planning
• platform
• speed and efficiency of I/O between functionally
  related systems
• the impact of the network type on
  intercommunication
• the impact of environmental issues on
  interoperability
• collaboration between geographically distant
  systems
• varying styles and level of human collaboration
  techniques
• skill level of the operator

Could these lessons learned be used to develop a
set of standards to support multi-national
coalition formation and development?
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Similarity Issues Regarding Team Formation

• Determine how similar a new partner is to
  existing team members
• Similarity can be assessed in terms of
• - culture
• - technological sophistication
• - planning style
• - social practices
• If the new member is very similar -- present
  with a common ontology or schema.
• If the new member is very different -- develop
  a mapping
• table to allow them to communicate with existing
  members.
• Can Similarity Metrics be used to recommend
  team formation?

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Conclusion

• The degree of standard requirements seems
  directly related to the degree of
  interoperability and integration desired.
• The degree of partnership in a team influences
  interoperability and data sharing and can change
  over time.
• Standards can have as big as impact as you
  desire.

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Recommendation

• Adhere to a minimum essential policy with
  respect to standards placed on software systems.
  
• Address the area of standards at the beginning
  of a program and do not ignore the issue or
  attempt to retrofit later.
• Evaluate any Coalition impact that could be
  caused by differences in terminology and process
  exchange problem.
• Examine issues associated with trust in
  partnership formation.
• Since we cannot standardize the user set,
  perhaps we need to create a compensation through
  the software to allow people to transition from
  non-common to common environments.