Decision support in an integrated environment

As the United States Navy enters into an era of reduced manning, the role of the decision maker and that of automation must change in order to maintain an acceptable level of performance. In the past, the responsibility of information synthesis has typically fallen on the operator. This becomes problematic when there is a lack of systems integration (most often technologies are co-located but not integrated), thus causing the operator to process an undue amount of information when analyzing information across multiple systems. Reducing the number of operators without changing the way decisions are made would result in information overload, delayed/degraded decision-making, and increased errors/accidents. If we are to successfully take sailors off ships, we must consider decision making in a new manner. One way to address the situation is to provide the decision maker/operator with a Knowledge Management System (KMS), which reduces cognitive processing requirements on behalf of the operator. For example, decisions based on doctrine can be automated with little impact on the quality of the decision as long as the operator is informed of what actions have been taken (keeping the operator in the loop). This paper will address the definition of Knowledge, the need for a KMS, functional allocation of Knowledge processing, and how systems can be designed for Knowledge Management concepts.