Investigation of a Graphical CONOPS Development Environment for Agile Systems Engineering - Phase 2

Abstract

This report summarizes the second phase of CONOPS development where the goal was to develop an initial set of primitives (core terms) organized into a taxonomy that is reusable when creating a collection of future scenarios for different domain. Here, scenarios like the Noncombatant Evacuation Operation Intelligence Gathering Scenario (NEO) and news agencies were investigated where operations like cognitive task analysis and decomposition of terms and concepts used in the scenario were performed. While each new domain requires an expansion of the taxonomy with new terms and concepts, many are common. The notion of transporting objects between locations, information gathering, communications, etc. are core to many actions that can be modeled and if represented graphically, the definition of new scenarios can be accomplished quicker and easier to understand. This research report also examines an easy to understand graphical modeling approach of snap together pieces associated with the developed taxonomy to aid the creation of scenarios, or operational concepts and proposes the development of a system that will aid the concept engineering process to produce graphical operations concept building on the reusable taxonomy developed in the research conducted in this phase. Recommendations for follow-on research in this area are also provided.

Model-Based Concept of Operations Development Using Gaming Simulation

“…This article will briefly describe CONOPS, the general application of gaming simulation to CONOPS, and a specific method to allow system users to create and execute CONOPS in a 3D immersive environment. This article presents an update to early research in progress (Cloutier et al 2009; Cloutier et al 2010; Cloutier et al 2012). It is an extension of a paper presented at the Third International Engineering Systems Symposium of the Council of Engineering Systems Universities (Korfiatis, Cloutier, & Zigh, 2012).…”