Characterizing Battlefield Human Decision Making with Value Focused Thinking and Reliability Modeling

Military officers and soldiers in combat are faced with complex, time-critical decision problems. The battlefield, or combat, environment involves decisive operations under unpredictable and rapidly changing conditions. Decisions in battlefields take place under uncertain, time constrained conditions and in a tactical environment. A battlefield decision maker encounters a dynamic information environment. During combat, individuals gather and consider information from a variety of sources to determine what information is reliable and useful, and what information is not. There is a clear correlation between the decision making process and the value of information feeding that process. This research examines a decision making model applicable to the battlefield space, a reliability of information model, and then a combined model integrating the individual models. The decision making model will exploit the value-focused thinking paradigm. The reliability model will capture information degradation considerations after deriving and defining a new reliability of information concept. The combined model will provide a means to capture and examine the dynamics of battlefield decision making by linking the value-focused thinking model and the information reliability model. The linked model (Integrated Model) has more advantages and it is more useful than existing models of battlefield decision making. Each effort represents a novel approach and a unique contribution of this research