Decision Processes and Team Communications with a Decision Support System

A decision support system (DSS) was developed to support tactical decision making in demanding, ambiguous situations. An applied experiment was conducted to evaluate the extent to which the DSS contributed to greater situational awareness. Eight highly experienced CO-TAO teams participated in four realistic scenarios, two with and two without the DSS. Decision performance and team communications were examined. With the DSS, teams were observed to focus on critical contacts earlier and to be more likely to take appropriate action. Teams using the DSS tended to communicate less, but they communicated in a similar pattern and about similar content regardless of DSS condition. These findings suggest that such systems can support decision makers by enabling them to access key data easily, to visualize the integral relations among data, and to manage complex response actions.