Presenting the Story Behind the Data: Enhancing Situational Awareness using Multimedia Narrative

Narrative is recognised as a powerful tool in the business community for corporate knowledge management and effecting cultural and organisational change. It is effective because it allows complex and contextual relationships to be conveyed in a simple and compelling format. This paradigm is also employed ubiquitously by television news services, which use a combination of narrative and multimedia content to convey situational awareness of complex local and global events. In this paper we discuss how such `multimedia narrative' could be used to extend the usual conceptualisation of situational awareness, exemplified by the common operating picture which only supports the decision makers' understanding of what is happening, to an understanding of what the actors are doing and what impact this has on the decision makers' intent. Thus, multimedia narrative extends the common operating picture by providing a mechanism by which higher-level information fusion, namely situation assessment and impact assessment, could be presented to decision makers to enhance their situational awareness. In essence, the common operating picture presents the data, while multimedia narrative presents the story behind the data. The Defence Science and Technology Organisation is exploring emerging technologies for multimedia narrative that range from the abstract to the specific, such as embodied conversational characters, 3D animations, and virtual representations of the battlespace. The aim of this work is not only to identify the limitations of these technologies and determine when they are appropriate, but to also exploit these limitations.