This poster presents research being performed by The Design Knowledge Company (TDKC) and the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) to develop tools to facilitate time-critical military decision support processes. In both the military and commercial domains, there is an overwhelming need for a robust methodology to support decision making in time critical situations. The X-CAT project is defining and developing argumentation-based approaches using XML topic maps (XTM), collaboration technologies, visualization techniques, course of action (CAS) tools, and other methods to support dynamic, time-critical activities such as support for military Defensive Counterspace (DCS) operations. The argumentation formalisms being designed for X-CAT provide a form of reasoning that account for uncertainty, ambiguity, and incomplete knowledge. With X-CAT for defensive counterspace operations, space warfighters will reduce the time required for time-critical decisions and will be able to rapidly provide inputs across echelons to build collaborative argument trees (known as fishbone diagrams). Automatic population of the fishbone diagrams with machine-to-machine data streams will reduce errors and augment the decision process.

X-CAT is being designed as an open-source, standards-based toolkit that enables rapid development of argumentation applications to support a variety of domains. It is based on the industry-standard ECLIPSE framework which enables distributed development, scalable deployment and a powerful plug-in architecture. X-CAT will also integrate JavaRank - a tool that was developed to display numeric data in spreadsheet format. Java Rank’s chief advantages over other spreadsheet programs are its abilities to collapse and expand data sets based on pre-defined criteria and to shade values of individual cells based on their value. X-CAT also incorporates NASA’s WorldWind visualization tool to enable innovative depiction of 2-D and 3-D decision support data. TDKC is planning to incorporate X-CAT technology into its current suite of decision support applications that are being developed for the military space operations market. There are several military and commercial applications of the X-CAT technology that will be highlighted in this poster session.

Mr. Loomis obtained his B.S. in Computer Science from Wright State University in Dayton, OH. He has over twenty years of experience with research and development, business development, marketing, and software development. He is Vice President and one of the founders of The Design Knowledge Company (TDKC). Prior to TDKC, he worked for a variety of defense contractors including Ball Aerospace, MTL Systems, CACI, and Veridian. At Ball Aerospace he was the manager of research and development and led several projects for a variety of clients including USAF, Army, Navy, and NASA.