Paul D. West

Risk-Based Decision Support of Water Resource Management Alternatives

Enhancing public welfare through the deliberate management of water resources is vital for every society. Pollution, overuse, and consumption challenge a societys ability to develop and sustain water supplies for municipal, agricultural, industrial, and recreational use while protecting fisheries and wetlands. Water resource management decisions are complex and involve risk. This paper identifies a risk taxonomy to help managers identify where those risks are and their severity. It is presented in the context of the Susquehanna River Basin that spans three states in the United States, with management interests at the state, regional, and national levels.

Just-in-time weather in the synthetic natural environment

Military mission rehearsals and virtual prototypes increasingly rely upon combat simulations to predict feasibility and success. The current US force projection doctrine requires these operations to be conducted anywhere, anytime, and under any conditions. Standard scenarios provide accurate location data, but generally lack realistic weather conditions that can easily reverse the fortunes of war. This paper describes an approach to bring realistic weather to combat simulations by merging historical archives, engineering-level mobility and detection models, and simulation databases into a robust synthetic natural environment. The conduit is the Simulation-Weather interface Module (SWIM), a Java-based tool set connecting simulations and their managers via the World Wide Web. This work allows analysts and planners to accurately determine and plan for weather conditions in any part of the world at any time. It also enables reliable what-if scenarios for mission rehearsal by forecasting operational weather, which can then be customized by the planner. The Web-based interface allows scenarios to be revised via the Internet from anywhere in the world.

Capturing situational awareness in combat simulations

Military situational awareness results from the synthesis of battlefield data into human understanding. It is formed through the bonding of information, training, experience and the personality of the commander. Computers can readily gather information, training can be assumed, but experience and personality are major challenges for the combat modeler. The Battlefield Knowledge Index (BKT) is one approach under investigation at the US Military Academy to measure situational awareness in Army simulations.