CODA: Coordinating Distributed Human Planners

Effective coordination of distributed human planners requires timely communication of relevant information to ensure the overall coherence of activities and the compatibility of assumptions. This paper presents a system called CODA that provides targeted information dissemination among distributed human planners as a way of improving coordination. Within CODA, each planner declares interest in different types of plan changes that could impact his or her local plan development. As individuals develop plans using a plan authoring tool, their activities are monitored; changes that match declared interests trigger automatic notification of appropriate planners. In this way, distributed planners can receive focused, real-time updates of plan changes that are relevant to their local planning efforts.