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3.6. QUALITY OF LIFE APPLICATIONS -- BUDGET BASED ANALYSIS, EUROPE (BBAE)

Quality of Life (QOL) concerns are very important and very peculiar to the military vs. the corporate world. The military not only provides a work environment, but also provides its own community-like services for its soldiers, airmen, and sailors. These include family housing, commissaries (grocery stores), exchange services (department stores, gas stations, military clothing, dry cleaning), hospitals, schools, daycare facilities, and morale, welfare, and recreation activities (i.e., MWR -- sports facilities, youth clubs, automotive shops, arts and crafts facilities). Providing these services is critical to the military for maintaining soldier and family morale -- which directly impact the military's readiness.

The United States Army, Europe (USAREUR) has published QOL standards that "define and quantify the minimum level of services that soldiers, civilians, and family members can expect, regardless of duty station." When the Cold War ended and the U.S. military began reducing its forces in Europe, there was great concern that the QOL programs would degrade to unacceptable levels. Unfortunately, it is impossible to cut QOL in a purely proportional manner. For example, one unit might have had to travel 20 minutes to reach the nearest daycare center. If that daycare center closes but the unit remains, the soldiers in that unit might have to travel greater distances to reach the next nearest center. This clearly would affect the soldier's morale and job performance.

In 1993, USAREUR requested assistance in studying the impact of budget constraints and closing of units and facilities on QOL. Eventually, the U.S. Military Academy's KEG became involved and helped to construct a decision support system. The system, called Budget Based Analysis, Europe (BBAE), allows USAREUR leaders to perform "what-if" analysis concerning budget reductions, shutdown of facilities, and deactivation or movement of units.

Constructing BBAE's knowledge base was an arduous task. USAREUR provided detailed information about the current units, soldier demographics, and QOL facilities. Each facility was analyzed for location, capacity, current customer base, and financial impact. The Army staff was consulted for projected changes in the force structure in the USAREUR area of operations. With this knowledge base, and a simple user-interface, BBAE users can build queries to satisfy questions like the following:

  • Compare the costs of operating and maintaining QOL assets in <present date> to those of <some future date>.
  • Do all family housing areas in <location> meet the QOL standard for proximity to <type of facility>? If not, which ones do not? What travel time standard is met?
  • What is the closest medical facility to <unit or housing area>?
  • What timetable will <unit> have to move from Germany to Italy?

BBAE was completed and delivered in 1994. The developers released a second version for American forces in the Republic of Korea a year later.

4. RESEARCH ISSUES

Because of its numerous successes in expert systems applications, the military has invested heavily in expert systems research. The intent is to facilitate expert system development for a wider range of applications. Two notable research efforts involve conceptual mapping for knowledge acquisition and validation and verification.

4.1. KNOWLEDGE ACQUISITION -- ADVANCED KNOWLEDGE ACQUISITION AND DESIGN ACQUISITION METHODS (AKADAM)

Traditional knowledge acquisition techniques tend to restrict the domain to being expressed in strict rules of logic so that the decision process can be readily encoded. AKADAM (McNeese, 1995) is a research effort into employing a more expert-centered approach with the help of more advanced knowledge acquisition techniques. AKADAM will allow the domain expert to retrieve and elaborate on situated knowledge using conceptual models. AKADAM converts these models internally to implementable rules.

AKADAM uses three types of knowledge representations: knowledge as concepts (using conceptual maps), knowledge as functions (using IDEF models), and knowledge as designs (storyboards). The combination of these representations allows greater flexibility in expressing the domain. The AKADEM prototype has been applied in several complex Air Force projects.

4.2. VERIFICATION AND VALIDATION

The military is especially concerned about verification and validation because expert system errors can be costly in lives and equipment. The Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences compiled a handbook for the managing the life cycle of an expert system (Adelman, 1996). This book discusses several issues common to locally developed expert systems, such as how to properly progress an expert system out of the prototype stage and into full usage. Although this research effort is now concluded, there is a need for translating this work into automated verification and validation means.

5. FUTURE TRENDS

There is little question that applications similar to those presented in this chapter will continue to flourish. The increased pace of the modern battlefield and the need to minimize casualties will only increase the demand for the ability to synthesize large amounts of information in an intelligent manner. As unmanned vehicles leave the laboratory and enter the field, expert systems will play an important role in their ability to perform their mission. Simulations will continue to increase their use of expert systems.

"Joint" applications will increase. "Joint" refers to an integrated Army, Navy, and Air Force operation or activity. The U.S. military has emphasized "joint" capabilities since the Goldwater-Nicholls Act of 1986, when the Department of Defense was reorganized. Before this act, the services had very different ways of doing business. This led to redundancy, and sometimes incompatibility. Expert systems will help bridge communication gaps among the services and eliminate the redundancy.

The role of expert systems in training and education will certainly increase. The use of simulations for training will certainly increase as the availability and expendability of resources decrease. Military education will make greater use of intelligent tutorials with Internet-based collaborative systems in order to reduce travel costs and provide quality education to all its soldiers, sailors, and airmen.


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