Information Management Staff Toolkit

In a network-centric infosphere, a mix of powerful information processing applications, high-speed networks, and human analysis transforms vast quantities of disparate information into knowledge required to make intelligent decisions.  Administering this mix involves a complex combination of policies, communications interfaces, and metrics.  This research addresses this problem with computer-generated visualizations that are cognitively mapped to extend the human capacity to understand and manage this complexity in the Air Force’s Joint Battlespace Infosphere.

Based on a comprehensive set of information management requirements and considering the cognitive modeling process involved in understanding a large information space, this research creates a set of zoomable, direct-manipulation visual browsers for managing information flow and policies in a JBI.  Interacting with an experimental JBI through a Management API, collaborative software agents collect and organize information for presentation in the zoomable browsers.  When conducting experimental management tasks, the visual browsers provide significant improvements over textual form-based browsers in both task efficiency and accuracy. 

Sponsor

This research is sponsored by Stanfield Systems Inc./AFRL from 2005 - 2007.