Dealing with uncertainty in automated decision support systems for emergency response scenarios

In an emergency response scenario, on scene commanders will have to rapidly formulate a viable course (plan) of action while being confronted with an atmosphere of considerable uncertainty are incomplete information and an over - changing and unpredictable, situation. Any automated Decision support system will have to cope with this uncertainty in a way that is easily understood by the user and the flexible enough for the user to modify to cater for situation specific factors. The particular emphasis in an emergency scenario is rapid action and there will not be any time to carry out extensive environmental impact assessments of the various possible courses of action using many of the curently used techniques. This paper gives an overview of some of the principal techniques currently used to deal with uncertainty and their automation implications. It them proposes a metric, along with a knowledge acquisition strategy, which assesss the relative advantage or disadventage of adoption a particular course of action, evaluates this advantage or disadventage relative to its overall Relevance in a particular scenario and then carries out two overall assessments of this course of action in accordance with Least Risk and Best Advantage criteria. Several possible courses of action are compared and the best one is selected based on a comparison of their overall assessments (AU)