Model-based measurement of situation awareness

Decision making in complex environments in the face of uncertain and missing information is a daunting task. We describe a modeling and simulation based approach to providing planners, analysts, and decision makers with a better understanding of the effect of imperfect information on the reliability of decisions made in such situations. We use techniques adopted from Sensitivity Analysis to evaluate the sensitivity of particular decision-making procedures to the uncertainty associated with the information that is being used to make the decision. We use this analysis to support the development of more robust decision-making procedures and effective and efficient information-gathering plans. We demonstrate how these tools can be used in both on-line decision analysis and offline decision evaluation and development, and we describe how these tools can be used to support complex simulation systems such as the U.S. Army's Modeling Architecture for Technology and Research EXperimentation (MATREX).