Multiple Vantage Points of the Common Operational Picture: Supporting International Teamwork

Abstract

This paper summarizes multiple perspectives of the common operational picture (COP) in military and civilian crisis management domains viewed from three vantage points: historical, conceptual, and practical. The term COP extends prior research on large group displays to describe a visual representation of tactical, operational, and strategic information intended to generate situation awareness. We present four strata of interest to formulate an innovative conceptual framework of the COP based on user-team needs: structure, representation, processes, and management. This conceptual framework is applied as part of a review of recent and ongoing projects that examines current research gaps in the application of geographic information systems (GIS) to international humanitarian response. INTRODUCTIONThe objective of this paper is to understand and pinpoint multiple perspectives of what has been referred to as the common operational picture (COP). The paper focuses on military and civilian crisis management domains involving multiple levels of teamwork that are often distributed and asynchronous in practice. To engage a broad perspective, this review will view the COP through historical, conceptual, and practical vantage points. These vantage points are not mutually exclusive but lend themselves to different portrayals of the COP as supported by the literature and our own viewpoints of the subject. We review the historical nature of the COP and how the term is presently used for our target areas of interest which are derived from military communications, command, and control (C 3 ) and network-centric operations. The perspective of geographic information systems (GIS) research provides a compelling context to explore these points in detail. BACKGROUND

Negative Affect Reduces Team Awareness

“…The communication structure in NeoCITIES is deliberately restricted to closely observe information moving between players, but this problem affects any situation where multiple teams must develop and sustain a common operational picture (McNeese et al, 2006). Decentralization and lack of communi cation system standards affect the interoperabil ity of local emergency services (e.g., police and fire) as much as multinational forces in a peace keeping operation.…”

Pooia's law: Estimation of the emergent value of service oriented environments

“…In Fig. 1 COP, for instance, is a coarse grained service which is likely composed of various geospatial layers or radar data [14].…”

Localization Services for Online Common Operational Picture and Situation Awareness

“…The information is merged into a common frame of reference and visualized on a screen from where it is easy to comprehend the current situation. The main task of COP systems is thus to bring together data from different subsystems and present that into an overview for enabling situation awareness of a variety of users and different teams [1]. VOLUME 1, 2013 The early studies of COPs were carried out in the 1980's [4].…”

“…A field team performs some task based on the instructions from the mission leader and upper echelon. A common operational picture (COP) [1] of the situation is formed, by the COP server and the MUSAS operator managing the system, using data from several subsystems deployed in the field. The COP is relayed to all the parties involved: the field team, mission leader, and upper echelon, to assist them in performing their tasks.…”