Information Categorization for BMD Command and Control

Abstract

Information requirements were investigated for operators in two BMD C2 (Ballistic Missile Defense Command and Control) Centers—command level and operations level. The objective was to elicit their underlying perceptions and cognitive structure of incoming data items, to address information display and decision support design requirements. Experts judged information items using an unconstrained sorting task, and data were analyzed using multivariate scaling methods. Findings revealed differences between the two groups in clustering of and associations between information items; e.g., more complex associations were found for the command level center. Also, the utility of the scaling algorithms for the large data sets used was assessed.