Multi-Environment Decision Support and Knowledge Exploitation in Terrorist Emergency Responses

The post 9/11 new security paradigm requires military forces to be prepared with robust capabilities to support the response to terrorist attacks against people and critical infrastructures. This paper describes a new R&D program, called MUSKETEER, that will develop decision support and knowledge exploitation tools and demonstrate how these tool sets can significantly improve the military forces ability to respond to terrorist attacks. MUSKETEER will create a collaborative workspace aiding military experts to work together effectively (and also aiding the military forces to coordinate with federal government departments and agencies, other civil authorities at all levels, and international allies when required) in order to integrate perspectives to better interpret the situation and the problem, identify candidate actions, formulate evaluation criteria, decide on what to do, and synchronize a diverse set of plans and actions. The paper discusses asymmetric threat and terrorism, outlines the perspective and responsibilities of the Department of National Defence (DND) regarding these important issues, considers the need for decision support and knowledge exploitation systems, and describes the main aspects of the MUSKETEER program, including the well-structured development process that has been identified to build the appropriate decision support system.