Improving Cognitive Effectiveness in Counterinsurgency Operational Planning

This paper describes a new software system that is designed to facilitate the cognitive processes of the operational planning team in counterinsurgency (COIN) environments. COIN environments pose many cognitive challenges to the operational planner; planners must maintain situation awareness, reason with numerous factors in the decision making process, and coordinate actions across echelons to ensure that long term goals are being met. The software system, called the Decision Infrastructure for Counterinsurgency Operational Planning (DICOP), provides an analytical framework for the operational planner that meets many of the cognitive challenges faced by the planning staff. DICOP provides a method for organizing and tracking relevant situational data, visualizing and modeling operational factors to facilitate decision making, and identifying and planning courses of action. These methods for improving cognitive effectiveness and the current field evaluation of DICOP in Iraq are discussed. Language: en