Supporting Distributed Coalition Planning with Semantic Wiki Technology
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Supporting Distributed Coalition Planning with Semantic Wiki Technology Paul R. Smart∗yy, Dave Brainesy, Jie Baoz, David Motty, Trung Dong Huynh∗, and Nigel R. Shadbolt∗ ∗School of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, Southampton, SO17 1BJ, UK yEmerging Technology Services, IBM United Kingdom Ltd, Hursley Park, Winchester, Hampshire, SO21 2JN, UK zDepartment of Computer Science, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY 12180, USA. yyCorresponding author: [email protected] Abstract—Contemporary and near-future military coalition interaction and engagement with online Web-based resources. environments present a number of challenges for military plan- Such technologies are commonly seen as epitomizing a tran- ning. Not only must military planners create plans against a sition to what has been dubbed Web 2.0, a kind of catch- backdrop of strict time constraints and uncertain information, they must also coordinate their planning efforts with other all term for Web resources that make increasing use of planning staff (often from different organizational, linguistic and online collaboration, dynamic content, crowd-sourcing, power cultural communities). This paper examines the potential for decentralization and the principles of user-centered design. semantic wikis to support collaborative planning activities in the Among these technologies, wiki systems (such as the popular face of these challenges. Whilst we do not claim that semantic online encyclopedia, Wikipedia) have emerged as particularly wikis could support all aspects of the collaborative planning process, we do suggest that semantic wikis can provide a highly potent examples of the power and potential of light-weight configurable online editing environment which is likely to be of online collaborative editing environments. At the present time, value in at least some coalition planning contexts. The strengths however, it is unclear to what extent the capabilities of these of semantic wikis include their support for distributed editing, Web-based systems match those required by military coalition their support for flexible forms of information presentation, planners working in distributed network environments. The and the opportunities they provide for new forms of inter- agent coordination. Their weaknesses include the absence of aim of this paper is to gain greater clarity on this issue. supportive plan editing interfaces and the limited support for The paper describes a potential set of wiki-based planning the representation of highly expressive planning models. In the capabilities which make specific use of the capabilities of the current paper, we discuss this profile of strengths and weaknesses, popular semantic wiki system, Semantic MediaWiki (SMW) and we also discuss how a specific semantic wiki system, namely [8]. By assessing this potential functionality, we aim to gain Semantic MediaWiki, could be used to support some aspects of collaborative planning. a greater understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of semantic wikis with respect to the challenges of the military I. INTRODUCTION coalition planning environment. Contemporary and near-future military coalition environ- ments present a number of challenges to those involved in the II. CHALLENGES OF THE MILITARY COALITION creation, dissemination and utilization of military plans. Not PLANNING ENVIRONMENT only must military planners create plans against a backdrop In order to assess the strengths and weaknesses of wiki- of time constraints and uncertain information, they must also based planning systems, it is important to better understand the coordinate their planning efforts with other planning staff challenges posed by contemporary and near-future coalition (often from different organizational, linguistic and cultural environments. Most of these challenges relate to the dy- communities) in order to ensure that the resulting plans are namic, distributed, time-constrained, informationally-hostile1 capable of supporting coordinated military action. and culturally-diverse nature of the military planning environ- In order to deal effectively with the challenges of the mil- ment. Thus, as part of their analysis of collaborative planning itary coalition planning environment, military planners need and situation awareness in Army command and control, Riley access to technological solutions that assist them with the et al [16] identify a number of critical human factors chal- task of collaboratively creating military plans in a distributed lenges associated with planning in land-battle situations. These network environment. Although a variety of ‘media-rich’ col- challenges include the need to rapidly develop and disseminate laboration technologies are likely to prove useful here (e.g. plans, the need to visualize plans and track deviations to video conferencing facilities, virtual environments, and so on), planned activities, the need to engage in contingency planning, it is possible that some collaborative technologies developed and the need to rehearse plans prior to deployment. A further in the context of the World Wide Web may also prove to be of value to military planners. Of particular interest are 1The fact that information is often unreliable, incomplete, ambiguous or technologies that support greater levels of user participation, conflicting. challenge identified by Riley et al [16] relates to the distributed 6) the ability to monitor situations during the course of plan nature of the planning process. In this case, planning staff are execution and anticipate requisite changes to the current often physically dislocated, and this leads to problems in terms plan. of the perceived degree and quality of coordination that can As a rough approximation, we can group these capabilities be achieved in distributed, network-mediated problem-solving into a number of categories (each of which serves to guide the contexts. As Riley et al [16] comment: discussion of wiki-based capabilities in subsequent sections “distributed planners need features, functions, of this paper). These include effective mechanisms for agent and interaction mechanisms which support effective coordination (point 4), flexible modes of presenting plan- coordination and promote the intense collaborative relevant information (points 2, 3 and 5), supportive plan editing process and brainstorming activities which can occur environments (point 1), and effective situation monitoring in co-located planning sessions.” [pg. 1145] capabilities (point 6). In addition, because military planning Related to the challenges identified by Riley et al [16] is likely to benefit from the exploitation of machine-based are the challenges introduced by the multi-cultural and multi- capabilities, it is important that collaborative systems should national nature of military coalitions. A number of studies provide suitable support for mixed-initiative planning (i.e. have highlighted cultural differences in the way US and UK they should maximally support the synergistic integration of military planners evaluate the quality of military plans [14], human- and machine-based planning capabilities). All of these and such differences may be anticipated to result in con- capabilities are obviously predicated, to a greater or lesser flict, confusion and, ultimately, breakdowns in trust between extent, on the availability of frameworks for the effective planning staff, as well as executive agencies, particularly representation of plan-relevant information. when plans are developed or communicated across cultural boundaries. Compounding this problem, of course, is the po- IV. SEMANTIC WIKIS IN SUPPORT OF MILITARY tential for miscommunication and misunderstanding between PLANNING both planners and plan executors (see, for example, [13]). Previous sections highlighted the challenges posed by the Such problems highlight the need for plan-related content to military coalition planning environment and the impact these be easily understandable by culturally- and organizationally- challenges have in terms of the capabilities we might expect diverse communities of agents. Ideally, coalition plans should of military planning systems. In this section, we examine to avail themselves of features that promote the development and what extent a wiki-based planning system, comprised entirely maintenance of understanding and trust between both those of freely available, open-source components, could be used who develop plans and those who are ultimately responsible to support planners in meeting the challenges posed by the for their execution. military coalition planning environment2. Wikis provide an attractive platform for the development of III. CAPABILITY TARGETS FOR MILITARY PLANNING distributed (network-mediated), collaborative capabilities, not SYSTEMS least because they have already proved to be very effective A consideration of the challenges associated with the mil- at supporting collaborative content-editing efforts in the con- itary coalition planning environment leads to a number of text of the conventional Web (witness the popularity of the conclusions regarding the kind of capabilities that need to Wikipedia system). The popularity and ease-of-use of wiki be supported by coalition planning systems. In general, such systems makes them ideal candidates for military applications systems need to support the following: that have minimal training overheads and that, in all likelihood, 1) the ability to rapidly create, edit and evaluate plan- tap into the existing