COP: From Knowledge Webs to Knowledge Portals

Over the last several years, the US DoD and its allies have been going through a major transformation, by implementing Net Centric Warfare (NCW). NCW provides the capability to share, access and protect information, and also collaborate in order to develop shared situation awareness. The Web has been a key enabler for NCW. Recent initiatives, such as the US K-Web and CA Command View, have caused the development of Knowledge Webs that easily connect organizations to information by exploiting Web technology. Other recent initiatives have been the implementation of Net-Centric Enterprise Services (NCES) which not only allow sharing of information but also sharing of services. One approach to implement the NCES is the use of Enterprise Portal technology. Over the last three years, Defence R&D Canada has been conducting the COP 21 Technology Demonstration project to explore and develop novel concepts for the Common Operational Picture (COP) of the future. COP 21 is referred to as a Situation Awareness Knowledge Portal. Some of its key concepts are the provision of portfolios to filter and categorize the information and the use of multiple portlets to view several items of information at the same time