Visualizing Constraints and Awareness of Submarine Maneuverability and Detectability

AbstractSubmariners must balance mission imperatives with own ship safety and operational security. A prime measure of safety is avoiding collisions with other contacts, including fishing and other commercial vessels—and especially other submarines and warships. A current problem for submariners is maintaining the submarine's manueverability when factors change, including the density of surrounding contacts, sea state, and weather/visibility, which impose constraints on the submarine's manueverability. These factors can also increase the submarine's detectability if the situation requires longer or more frequent periscope views to maintain situation awareness. Having visualization tools that help submariners manage manueverability and detectability aids decision making by identifying recommended boundaries in the area of operation and recommended patterns of periscope operation. To provide the tools submariners need, we designed and developed several visual aids that identify recommended courses of action for various situations, which promotes greater awareness for future missions. These visual aids were formulated from a combination of Knowledge Elicitation (KE) sessions and cognitive task analysis with development of an abstraction hierarchy and a decision ladder. Our visual aids consist of mapping out a submariner's area of operation by highlighting an optimized path the submariner can take when trying to avoid collisions. By having the ability to visualize these important factors and metrics that are involved in lowering a submarine's detectability while still promoting safety helps increase a submariner's awareness while also providing continuous improvement through risk management and mitigation for risky situations