Decision superiority is achieved not just by acquiring and assessing
the right information, but by translating it into actionable knowledge that can
be exploited in the decision making process. Achieving decision superiority is
necessary, because the decisions made by commanders and staff, ultimately,
determine mission outcome. Although technology is integral to the process, it
is limited by factors such as bandwidth optimization, system interoperability,
and information flow optimization. However, most important to the Command and
Control (C
$^{2}$
) decision makers today are the cognitive processes that enable
commanders to determine when to employ C
$^{2}$
information systems to support C
$^{2}$
decisions and the methods of how to respond to cues provided by the systems.
This paper describes a continuous decision making process model that is
specifically suited to support C
$^{2}$
decision superiority. Decision makers are
continually inundated with data, albeit most data provides non actionable
intelligence and unreliable information. Inadequate data is inadmissible,
specifically from the perspective of a C
$^{2}$
information systems design, where
timely delivery of the right information to C
$^{2}$
decision makers is essential,
thus, context awareness is a key necessity. Context in C
$^{2}$
operations is dynamic
and includes factors such as mission, enemy, terrain (and weather), personnel,
time available, and civil support. Understanding and keeping track of these
variables is the cornerstone of future C
$^{2}$
decision making, especially for
network centric warfare operations. The DecisionEdge™ model is based on the
"context-goal alternatives" construct, which
recognizes as context changes, the goal might also change, thus, precipitating
the need for generating a new set of alternatives. It should be noted that
goals are not constant; therefore, they can change when a new mission directive
is initiated.
