Visualizing Cognitive Strategies in Time-Critical Mission Replanning

A post-hoc cognitive strategies visualization tool for operators in command and control environments, TRACS (Tracking Resource Allocation Cognitive Strategies) captures the critical steps performed in solving a resource allocation problem like those typically encountered in mission planning and replanning. TRACS presents a human operator’s cognitive strategies in a twodimensional space, using axes of automation levels and information types. TRACS has been successfully used on Tomahawk strike planning and path planning interfaces: the cognitive strategies visualizations created from mission planning scenarios displayed clear patterns of behavior that could be correlated to performance. Although an innovative way to understand and monitor human operators’ strategies to solve multivariate, complex resource allocation problems, TRACS was previously limited to static environments. Thus, we developed an extension, TRACS 3D, which adds a third axis for time to the existing axes. A three dimensional representation of the operator’s cognitive strategies, TRACS 3D attempts to capture the temporal aspects of human interaction in mission planning. However, an early pilot application of the tool to Tomahawk mission replanning problems showed strong limitations and cumbersome drawbacks. Thus, “TRACS 2.5D” was developed to address these drawbacks, and is a hybrid tool between the original two-dimensional TRACS and TRACS 3D,