Virtual Environment Study of Mission-Based Critical Information Requirements

The Human Research and Engineering Directorate of the U.S. Army Research Laboratory conducted an experiment to determine the critical information required by soldiers in four echelons (squad member, fire team leader, squad leader, and platoon leader). This information is intended for use in the development of the design requirements for information systems such as the Smart Sensor Web. The experiment was conducted in the Dismounted Battlespace Battle Lab's Squad Synthetic Environment (S SE), a virtual environment that allows the squad to participate in force-on-force exercises. A validation study of the SSE was conducted before the start of the experiment to ensure that information gathered in the virtual environment would be comparable to that gathered in a live experiment. The eight squads that participated in the experiment conducted infantry operations using scripted vignettes that were prepared to include as many situations as possible that are typically encountered during infantry operations. After participation in each vignette, soldiers rated the criticality of each of the situational awareness (SA) items on a questionnaire. This questionnaire was developed after a literature search and a subject matter expert conference that were conducted to gather potential SA critical information items.Army Research Lab Aberdeen Proving Ground Human Research and Engineeringdirectorate is the author of 'Virtual Environment Study of Mission-Based Critical Information Requirements', published 2002 under ISBN 9781423506522 and ISBN 1423506529.