Multi-agent system for simulation and validation of scenarios

Tese de mestrado integrado. Engenharia Informática e Computação. Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade do Porto. 201

IMMACCS: A Multi-Agent Decision-Support System

This report describes work performed by the Collaborative Agent Design Research Center for the US Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory (MCWL), on the IMMACCS experimental decision-support system. IMMACCS (Integrated Marine Multi-Agent Command and Control System) incorporates three fundamental concepts that distinguish it from existing (i.e., legacy) command and control applications. First, it is a collaborative system in which computer-based agents assist human operators by monitoring, analyzing, and reasoning about events in near real-time. Second, IMMACCS includes an ontological model of the battlespace that represents the behavioral characteristics and relationships among real world entities such as friendly and enemy assets, infrastructure objects (e.g., buildings, roads, and rivers), and abstract notions. This object model provides the essential common language that binds all IMMACCS components into an integrated and adaptive decision-support system. Third, IMMACCS provides no ready made solutions that may not be applicable to the problems that will occur in the real world. Instead, the agents represent a powerful set of tools that together with the human operators can adjust themselves to the problem situations that cannot be predicted in advance. In this respect, IMMACCS is an adaptive command and control system that supports planning, execution and training functions concurrently. The report describes the nature and functional requirements of military command and control, the architectural features of IMMACCS that are designed to support these operational requirements, the capabilities of the tools (i.e., agents) that IMMACCS offers its users, and the manner in which these tools can be applied. Finally, the performance of IMMACCS during the Urban Warrior Advanced Warfighting Experiment held in California in March, 1999, is discussed from an operational viewpoint

Strategic Culture as the Basis for Military Adaptive Capacity: Overcoming battlefield technological surprises

The ability of a military to respond to environmental changes rather than rigidly adhere to previously defined concepts of operation is paramount to overcoming unforeseen battlefield technological challenges. A force with the greater capacity for learning and adaptation will possess significant advantages in overcoming unforeseen challenges. However, it is unclear as to what determines the flexibility or adaptive capacity of a military during military engagements. To address this issue, this study focuses on intra- war adaptation as a product of a military’s strategic culture in overcoming enemy technological surprises. The work demonstrates the symbiotic relationship between strategic culture and adaptability that ultimately determines how effectively a force will respond to unforeseen battlefield challenges. For this reason, strategic culture is indispensable in explaining why militaries may continue to act in ways that are incongruous with prevailing operational circumstances while others are adept at responding to Clausewitzian fog and friction

Legions and locals : Roman provincial communities and their trophy monuments

textThis study considers five Roman trophy monuments in the context of global versus local culture in the provinces: the Sullan trophy at Chaeroneia, Pompey’s trophy at Panissars, Octavian’s campsite memorial at Nikopolis, Augustus’s Alpine trophy at La Turbie, and Trajan’s Dacian trophy at Adamklissi. Each trophy represents a unique case study of an identifiable Roman form and tradition deemed appropriate for/by a provincial community. These individualized characteristics imply localized negotiation of imperial or global ideas—specifically, a non-Roman’s ability to manipulate Roman concepts emanating from the capital and/or the desire for Romans to these ideas to appeal to a provincial audience. My study of these trophies uncovers a widespread phenomenon that contradicts the assumption that culture was dictated from the center to the periphery, from the elite to the non-elite and from the urban to the rural in the Roman Empire. This dissertation is a response to Simon Keay’s and Nicola Terrenato’s lamentation over the lack of comparative analysis for these recent theories and Andrew Wallace-Hadrill’s challenge to concretize definitions of Romanization. In fact, I demonstrate how these five Roman trophies featured themes legible to a broad audience in the ancient world and specialized narratives that catered to the local scene. Altogether, these case studies represent compelling examples of a much more dynamic kind of Romanization than current scholarship admits.Art and Art Histor

Toward an Actor-Network approach for investigating education and learning within a corporate university: a world of heterogeneous assemblages

Education and learning in organizations are dynamic in nature and conventionally considered to depend on sociality. Nevertheless, the development of technologies has provoked impassable impacts. The theoretical proposal of knowledge as a collective activity (knowing) drives to the concept of situated learning. However, material artifacts tend to be ignored. Conversely, this research recognizes the importance of considering the organization as a heterogeneous assemblage of social, material and practices. This suggests a methodological shift to question the canonical analysis of the organization and learning theories. Actor-Network Theory (ANT) surfaces the materiality of practices, creating a foundational for regarding objects as legitimate actors. Assuming that it is no longer possible to separate sociality from materiality, this study pioneers adult learning settings

Autonomous Weapon Systems: A Brief Survey of Developmental, Operational, Legal, and Ethical Issues

What does the Department of Defense hope to gain from the use of autonomous weapon systems (AWS)? This Letort Paper explores a diverse set of complex issues related to the developmental, operational, legal, and ethical aspects of AWS. It explores the recent history of the development and integration of autonomous and semi-autonomous systems into traditional military operations. It examines anticipated expansion of these roles in the near future as well as outlines international efforts to provide a context for the use of the systems by the United States. As these topics are well-documented in many sources, this Paper serves as a primer for current and future AWS operations to provide senior policymakers, decisionmakers, military leaders, and their respective staffs an overall appreciation of existing capabilities and the challenges, opportunities, and risks associated with the use of AWS across the range of military operations. Emphasis is added to missions and systems that include the use of deadly force.https://press.armywarcollege.edu/monographs/1303/thumbnail.jp

Making sense of terrorism : a narrative approach to the study of violent events

How does violence become understood as terrorism? In this article, we show how a narrative approach to the study of violent events offers a conceptually productive way to understand the process of “seeing” an event as a terrorist act, one that explicitly integrates the phenomenology of violence. While the collective practice of defining terrorism in academia and the policy arena has struggled to produce a universal definition, we identify a set of “common sense” characteristics. We argue that if the framing of violent events prominently features these characteristics as discursive anchors, this primes processes of sensemaking toward interpreting violence as terrorism. While terrorism markers are often articulated as being pragmatic and apolitical indicators of terrorist acts, we show that they are indeed at the core of political contests over historical and physical facts about violent events. The narrative approach we develop in this article underscores that intuitive leanings toward interpreting violence as terrorism are a sign of political agency precisely because they are produced through the stories political agents tell

Mitigating munitions: The consequences of using technology during counterinsurgency campaigns

American counterinsurgency in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan relied on conventional warfare methods than counterinsurgency warfare methods. These methods proved detrimental to operational success and put members of the military at risk. To find this, I used after-action reports from Vietnam by the 1st Cavalry, 4th Infantry, and 25th Infantry Divisions. I used oral histories by the Veterans History Project and the Cantigny First Division Oral Histories to reveal their experiences while conducting these campaigns. The primary method began in Vietnam with Arc Light (B-52) strikes, artillery strikes, and napalm as preparatory strikes. American units then used search-and-destroy maneuvers to root out the Viet Cong. Not only did these air power methods fail to kill large numbers of Viet Cong, it led to the Viet Cong controlling the population’s support that is so vital to counterinsurgency warfare. During the Global War on Terror in Iraq and Afghanistan, the American military implemented similar methods with negative effects. House-to-house sweeps in Iraq resembled Vietnam’s cat-and-mouse game with insurgents in the jungle. Afghanistan’s mountains granted the insurgency its fluidity, which the U.S. was unable to effectively counter. The only viable solution that the military saw was to continue its reliance on American technological superiority. The ineffective practices in Iraq led to the Surge in 2007. Army General David Petraeus sparked doctrinal and operational change that acknowledged the population and used it to undermine the insurgency. However, the Surge came too late in Afghanistan in 2009 to make a difference. A change in presidential administration in 2008, paired with an exhausted American public that grew warry of the validity of these campaigns, which is the greatest vulnerability of counterinsurgency operations. The Obama administration prosecuted the war in Afghanistan the only way it could realistically do so, through drone warfare. This enabled the killing of insurgents without putting servicemembers at risk. The reversion back to this conventional, traditional mentality from methods like the Surge revealed how the U.S. viewed counterinsurgency warfare