Transmission and Display of Information for Time-Critical Decisions

We describe methods for prioritizing information for transmission over limited bandwidth connections based on an analysis of how the data may enhance the quality of actions and the cost of delaying tranmission of the data in time-critical contexts. We show how the methods apply also to the prioritization and con guration of information displayed to decision makers who must act in time-critical situations. The techniques provide tools for real-time control of the con guration and quantity of information transmitted or displayed to a user. We will rst de ne a set of prototypical time-critical decision problems. We then discuss the general notion of the expected cost of delayed action (ECDA). Then, we introduce the related notion of expected value of revealed information (EVRI) and the related measure of the expected value of displayed information (EVDI). We describe how these measures can be used to control the transmission of information that is sent over limited bandwidth channels or displayed to users responsible for monitoring and controlling complex systems.