Integrating geospatial decision support into C2 decision making

摘要

A map is easy to understand and central to the planning and execution of any military campaign, butrnlimited in the help it can give command and control when the situation is changing quickly in time andrnspace. Computer-based tools can help the decision-making process but require expertise and familiarityrnthat are not commonly available. Geospatial decision support (GDS) greatly assists the relativelyrnunskilled in using geographical information systems to enable symbolic representations of data to berncombined with maps so that exploratory questions can be answered interactively and quickly. Thernpaper describes GDS and illustrates its value with a case study taken from a real conflict where thernoverriding question was where to place field guns in a mountainous region when finding trajectoriesrnthat were unimpeded by intervening terrain was not straightforward. The rapid and successful softwarerndevelopment rested heavily on close interactions between the designer, the decision maker and thernsystem.