Human factors issues in future command spaces

Naval command and control is a complex domain requiring a team of personnel to co-ordinate information from a number of different sources, build up a tactical picture of the environment and respond to events through the direction of resources. Naval command and control team tasks comprise of a number of individual tasks. The nature of the current procurement process tends to be such that technical solutions are developed to support individual tasks rather than the team task as a whole. Different types of tasks may be best supported by different types of interaction technologies. However, the use of these separate technologies needs to be considered within a dynamic team scenario to ensure human factors issues, particularly concerning information integration, are considered during command space development. A case study was conducted which reviewed the application of future technologies in a dynamic Anti-Air Warfare (AAW) scenario with the aim of identifying these issues.