ISMIS: A Military Transportation Decision-Support Framework

This paper discusses the challenges that the Information Revolution poses to transportation planning, execution and training in the US military services. Attention is drawn to the opportunities provided by global connectivity and the manner in which these opportunities can be applied to advantage in an integrated, collaborative, decision-support framework. The characteristics of military deployment operations are discussed in respect to system requirements such as parallel activities, internal representation of information (rather than data), intelligent assistance, and the integration of planning, execution and training functions. The Integrated Strategic Mobility Interface System (ISMIS) is described as a framework that is designed to allow multiple decision-support applications and databases to seamlessly operate in a distributed military deployment environment. The Integrated Computerized Deployment System (ICODES) serves as an example of a typical decision-support application that supports the needs of ship load planning within the ISMIS framework. Introduction and Challenges The information society is bringing changes that are being felt in all areas of human endeavor. It is particularly evident that these changes are coming in rapid succession and that many of the methods and systems that commerce, industry and government have relied on in the past to deal with change and to support complex tasks are becoming less and less effective. So also are the US military services confronted with societal and technical changes that will have profound influence on the way they must design, implement and operate their planning, execution and training systems. Prominent among these changes are the following three: • Increasingly, the US military forces will be involved in joint operations, often involving foreign countries as allies. This requires an unprecedented level of coordination, flexibility, interconnectivity, global sensitivity and knowledge (e.g., foreign languages), training, and standardization.