Risk Advised Course of Action (COA) Analysis

The purpose of this project is to demonstrate the feasibility and value of Synergias experimental Risk-Advised Planning RAP technology. This technology embodies an analytical tool called Value of Informed Control over Events VOICE. VOICE manages simulation-based analysis for COA development and assessment. RAP integrates human systems modeling tools to develop causal conditions and trajectories for projected COA execution, with VOICE decision-theoretic tools to assess and comparatively evaluate candidate COAs. The results of VOICE guide COA designredesign, and circumscribe whatever information gathering and human systems modeling may be required. The value of the experimental VOICE technology was successfully demonstrated as a formal mechanism for managing the potentially unbounded combinatory complexity of simulation-based planning. VOICE clearly identifies the most important causal variables in a COA. It sharply circumscribes the simulation studies that are required to establish the kinds and frequency of outcomes pertinent to COA evaluation and redesign. The authors illustrate RAPs operation on a simulation scenario -- the Jakarta scenario -- that was developed under the Joint Semi-Automated Forces JSAF environment. The Jakarta scenario consists of a series of events following the assassination of the Indonesian president and key government leaders that ultimately leads to a military intervention of the Australian forces blue forces on Indonesia red forces. First, they describe their revised version of the Jakarta scenario and use it as background to illustrate the complexities associated with the development of plans and the design of simulation studies. Then, they summarize the technology and methods employed in this demonstration, including the VOICE technology and the H-RAP method. Next, they present the demonstration itself they describe each step of their hierarchical planning approach as they apply it to the Jakarta scenario.