SORDE: Special Operations Rapid Decision-making Environment Navy SBIR FY2008.1 Sol No.: Navy SBIR FY2008.1 Topic No.: N08-070 Topic Title: SORDE: Special Operations Rapid Decision-making Environment Proposal No.: N081-070-0924 Firm: Aptima, Inc. 12 Gill Street Suite 1400 Woburn, Massachusetts 01801 Contact: Shawn Weil Phone: (781) 496-2456 Web Site: aptima.com Abstract: As coordination and collaboration tools have become more sophisticated to support complex environments, research on tool-based interaction has become more crucial. Nowhere is the research more imperative than in military Special Operations, where effective collaboration in time pressured situations can mean the difference between success and catastrophic failure. Resilience to failure, disparities of tool availability, and distributed team members are a few of the many challenges to effective decision-making in time critical situations. SORDE, the Special Operations Rapid Decision-making Environment, is intended to support a program of operationally-relevant experimentation and application development that incorporates insight from the warfighter and knowledge of collaboration and coordination science. One particular experimental focus in Phase I will be the relative value of structured tools in comparison to more open-ended knowledge exploration features when supporting the warfighter. An enhancement to the current NAVAIR CORE testbed, SORDE will enable empirical investigation of issues critical to effective military collaboration, coordination, and communication. Existing metrics and tools will be incorporated into SORDE's components. SORDE will then be used to prototype applications intended to support rapid decision-making in Navy Special Operations, enabling transition from the laboratory to the field. Benefits: SORDE will benefit the Office of Naval Research Collaborative Knowledge Interoperability program, the Office of Naval Research, military Special Operations, and the team and organizational performance research community. It will strengthen the relationship between research on coordination/collaboration and the operational need for rapid decision-making in Special Operations. It is a benefit to NAVAIR in that the proposed enhancements to the CORE Testbed expand the types of empirical inquiries that are possible in their facility. As many organizations coordinate asynchronously and in complex environments, the research and development afforded by SORDE has wide application in areas as diverse as the operations of Navy SEALS and municipal first responders. Return