Knowledge Glyphs: Visualization Theory Development to Support C2 Practice

摘要

Recent and ongoing research into the subject of knowledge glyphs illustrates how the state of the art in theory and practice interact and open up new requirements for innovation with respect to each other. This paper reports research that was motivated by recognition of the need to augment current 'best practices' in C2 symbology in order to accommodate the complexities of modern warfare. The notion of knowledge glyphs derives from an understanding of shortcomings of current visualizations and a desire to create more sophisticated visualization elements that allow interaction between information regarding the entities portrayed and the contexts in which decisions must be made regarding those entities. This paper lays out the most recently developed definitions of knowledge glyphs, which were derived from the notion that a model for knowledge glyphs would have to be internally coherent, referentially comprehensive, and explicitly linked to the visual interface elements that were the foci of our interest. Our examination of this model suggests a subsequent state of the art in visualization technique linked to an analogous new state of the art in this technique's usage. In this way we have 'circulated' from practice to theory and back again.