Multi-perspective modelling of the Air Campaign planning Process

This paper describes work performed to acquire knowledge about, and produce models of, the USAF Air Campaign Planning (ACP) process. The aim of this work was to produce a set of "knowledge models" which researchers in the area could refer to, rather than having each of them interview the expert planners. It was decided that the models which were produced should be multi-perspective models; that is, a variety of models would be produced, each containing a particular type of knowledge about the air campaign planning process, The basis for this approach was the CommonKADS methodology for modelling organisational and expert, knowledge. This paper describes the development of organisational, task and communication models to represent air campaign planning from various perspectives. For some models, it was decided that CommonKADS' representations were not sufficiently rich, and so alternative modelling techniques (IDEF3 and Role Activity Diagrams) were used to represent the Task and Communication models. It was discovered that these techniques could be used without modification to represent CommonKADS models. An architecture is proposed, based on the Sowa/Zachman framework for Information Systems Architecture, to help determine the types of knowledge addressed by various modelling techniques.