A Dynamic Agile Process Model for Situational Awareness: A Machine-Understandable, Fractal-based, Data-driven Approach

This position paper describes how a proposed Dynamic Agile Process Model (DAPM) can be a useful representation of situational awareness. The traditional definitions of situational awareness are highly conceptual and text-based, intended for human consumption, so a simpler, more specific machine-understandable definition is needed for computer processing. At its simplest, the authors suggest that situational awareness can be considered the intersection of processes. If the processes can be represented effectively and efficiently in a computer representation, then so can situational awareness. The Dynamic Agile Process Model (DAPM) has certain characteristics, including both static and dynamic aspects, as well as fractal characteristics such as self-similarity, complexity built from simplicity, and optimized information flow, which seem to match the similar characteristics of situational awareness. Using this process model, situational awareness can be represented in a manner amenable to machine processing for applications such as planning, training, command and control, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, and after-action analysis. The authors are beginning to explore enabling situational awareness in smart avatars using this model for these applications in the SPAWAR Systems Center BEMR lab: Battlespace Exploitation of Mixed Reality. For more information or to participate or join the Advanced Exploitation of Mixed Reality (AEMR) Community of Interest, please send an email to BEMR@spawar.navy.mil