Designing Collaborative Planning Systems: Putting Joint Cognitive Systems Principles to Practice

Abstract

A major challenge in developing the Rapid Course of Action Analysis Tool was the need to bridge the gap between the detailed problem specification input that is required by the simulation model and the fact that our planners would be unlikely to know the problem at this level of detail at the time problems are first posed to them. To bridge this gap, we developed utilities that convert high-level specifications of the sort that the transportation planners are likely to have into lower-level specifications that the model needs to run. For example, transportation planners can input minimal information about the cargo to be moved (e.g., total short tons) if this is the only information available to them.