Modeling Situational Awareness in Network Centric Systems

Modeling Situation awareness (SA) in NCO/NCW environments is inherently challenging due to the complexity of the underlying network, highly dynamic nature of processes, and the need for real time analysis. In this paper, we present a performance model for SA using the Network Centric Operations Performance & Prediction (NCO-PP) framework, an established framework for analyzing and predicting performance of NCO/NCW networks. In this paper, we continue to formulate a realistic model that represents dynamism in both the information and network spaces and also their effects on each other. We validate our model via simulations that compare the performance of SA under various information sharing and filtering paradigms. We provide and define a number of relevant performance metrics for SA and show with experimental results that modeling the dynamism in the network lead to superior SA. We also show that the performance of the SA can be significantly improved with proactive resource allocation that takes into account the real time predictions of the future states of the network and the environment.