Instability of distributed decision making in in command and control systems

Author

Kott, Alexander ; Hubbard, Paul ; Martin, Michael

Author_Institution

BBN Technol., Pittsburgh, PA, USA

Volume

4

fYear

2001

fDate

2001

Firstpage

2743

Abstract

We argue that the phenomenon of autocatalytic decision overload (ADO) may be a key mechanism contributing to catastrophic collapse of command and control (C2) systems. We introduce the concept of ADO and describe typical scenarios for such a collapse. We then provide a simple nonlinear difference equation model for the dynamics of error propagation in C2 systems which exhibits the ADO phenomena and examine extensions of this model to complex networks of decision making units. We discuss these examples and finally provide a practitioner´s guide to mitigating the ADO phenomenon

Keywords

command and control systems; decision theory; difference equations; nonlinear differential equations; stability; C2 systems; autocatalytic decision overload; catastrophic collapse; command and control systems; distributed decision making; error propagation; instability; nonlinear difference equation model; Command and control systems; Complex networks; Decision making; Distributed decision making; Humans; Nonlinear dynamical systems; Nonlinear equations; Pathology; Personnel; Protocols;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

American Control Conference, 2001. Proceedings of the 2001

Conference_Location

Arlington, VA

ISSN

0743-1619

Print_ISBN

0-7803-6495-3

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ACC.2001.946300

Filename

946300