Everybody's talking at me: information flow in a command and control environment

Increasing requirements to enhance mobility, coupled with a need to defend troops from the lethality of the modern battlefield, are causing the Army to consider new organizational arrangements and new communication and information technologies for the command and control (C2) of battalion-level combat units. It is important to understand the role information plays in enhancing the ability of C2 team members to make critical decisions. This study describes an information flow analysis, using four concurrent and correlated coding schemas, of videotapes taken of an active Army combat unit engaging in a combat simulation exercise. Coding of 135 out of 1035 minutes of simulated combat in an artillery Tactical Operations Center seems to indicate that information flow in such a task environment is constant, diverse, both directional and omnidirectional, both focused and generalized, and germane to multiple levels of situational awareness at the same time