Quantification of Subjective Information Assessments in C2 Decision Option Selection

Abstract : Two of the more subjective processes in decision making involve forming an opinion about each decision-relevant information item (i.e., the impact and importance of that item to any decision option) and then selecting one option based upon some form of cognitive weighting of the entire information pool. The decision support package described here simplifies and quantifies these two processes by supplying an intuitive interface to capture: (1) location of the information item (2) content of the information item (3) quality of the information (4) timeliness of the information (5) decision option impacted (6) nature of that impact and (7) the importance of the item. Using a weighting matrix, the subjective assessments of impact and importance for each information item are converted into single score and then all the information item scores for a particular decision option are summed. The final total scores are used to quantitatively assess the ranking all the various decision options. An exchange module makes all assessments available to all participants, enabling the group to quickly focus on the key differing individual assessments causing any lack of group consensus.