Crew actions play a significant role in the outcome of a damage scenario. The IRM provides a unique capability to assess the extent of damage versus the speed of crew damage control actions, determine how fast the crew needs to respond to prevent loss of capability, identify the consequences for delay, and produce reasonable results for 1,000s of scenarios.
The current version of the IRM software models the crew as omniscient actors which can be called by ship systems to perform a variety of tasks, provided they are not otherwise occupied and have the appropriate skill set. In this manner the crew represents a limited resource that must move about the ship performing tasks vital to damage control and reconfiguration. While this method produces useful information related to task loading, egress and route planning, and crew billet distribution; the results tend to represent the best case scenario. Therefore, an agent based approach to modeling the crew is being developed that will simulate the process of discovery and provide different results based on the availability of ship sensors and internal communications.
In FY09, DOT&E ad NRL sponsored development of a proof of concept agent based software module for use with the IRM. The concept requires the crew to discover smoke and fire, communicate information to decision makers, and determine appropriate damage control actions based on their limited knowledge of the shipboard conditions. The crew must re-evaluate their actions when new information is discovered. In cooperation with Hughes Associate, Inc. (www.haifire.com), Test & Evaluation Solutions personnel successfully demonstrated a proof of concept capability to simulate information discovery, communication, and decision making that:
· Allows for variation in the Damage Control organization
· Addresses communications as a contributor to successful response
· Allows any crew member to discover information and communicate it up the chain of command
· Allows decisions affecting Damage Control actions to be made based the limited information available to the decision maker
· Provides a flexible structure that permits behaviors and decision making logic to be modified over time; starting simple and building to more complex behaviors
In FY 10, the Test & Evaluation Solutions team, including Hughes Associates, Inc. and SOAR Technology, Inc. (www.soartech.com) was awarded a Navy Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) for topic N09-128 to develop an expert system that provides a reasonable approximation of the “fog of war’s” impact on the ability of a ship’s crew to respond to battle damage as part of a recoverability assessment.