Visual Knowledge in Tactical Planning: Preliminary Knowledge Acquisition Phase 1 Technical Report

Abstract

Abstract : Over the past twenty years, much has been learned about the structure and use of human knowledge and the potential values of computer representation and manipulation of knowledge and reasoning for a variety of problem solving purposes. However, very little of this work has concerned itself with those components of human knowledge that are not easily expressed in verbal terms, for reasons both of difficulty in assessing the knowledge involved and of representing it within the confines of a computer representation. The work described here is part of a project focused on the non-verbal (visual) components of knowledge used in a map-based planning task. This phase of the project involved knowledge acquisition activities oriented toward identifying the visual objects and features of objects that are of tactical importance. The long-term intent of the work is to combine the verbal components of objects that are of tactical importance. The long-term intent of the work is to combine the verbal components of the task and required knowledge with the visual components to generate a user interface for a tactical planning decision support system whose displays and behavior are compatible in form and content with the cognitive representations of its users whose internal representations support direct manipulation of both visual and verbal knowledge. During their planning sessions, the experts referred to five types of map characteristics, and mentioned a total of 13 man-made terrain units (roads, towns, bridges), 22 naturally occuring specific terrain units (hill, river, stream), and 11 composite terrain units (avenue of approach, field of fire)