Command And Control Process Capture And Modeling With Collaborative Workflow

The Virtual Testbed for Advanced Command and Control (VTAC) program performs research and development efforts leading to the creation of a testbed for the evaluation of new command and control (C2) processes, subprocesses, and embedded automated systems and subsystems. This testbed supports the capture and modeling of existing C2 processes and subprocesses. Having modeled processes at proper levels of abstraction, proposed revisions or replacements to processes, systems, and subsystems can be evaluated within a virtual workspace that integrates human operators and automated systems in the context of a larger C2 process. By utilizing such a testbed early in the development cycle, expected improvements resulting from specific revisions or replacements can be quantitatively established. Effects resulting from changes to one or more interrelated processes are measured. Quantified measures of improvement are provided to decision makers for use in cost-to-performance benefits analysis prior to implementing proposed revisions, replacements, or a sequence of planned enhancements, This paper first presents a high-level view of the VTAC project, followed by a discussion of the time critical targeting (TCT) team C2 process that was captured, abstracted, and modeled. The abstraction approach, model implementation, and simulation results are covered in detail.