The Formal Representation of Administrative and Operational Relationships within Defense Organizational Constructs
Abstract
The objective for Global Force Management (GFM) is to establish a transparent and universal process to manage, assess and display the worldwide disposition of US forces. This includes US force availability, readiness and capability to assess the risks associated with proposed allocation, assignment and apportionment options. Fundamental to GFM and foundational to transformation is the GFM Data Initiative (GFM DI), which addresses organizing force structure data in a joint hierarchical way for integration across Service lines. A major task of this endeavor is the creation of Service, Joint, and Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) organization computer servers to provide the basic, default reference data to which other data may be related. This data must be formally documented using unambiguous semantics so that sophisticated computer programs can economically exploit it. The abstraction of tree graphs has been chosen to formally represent this information. The nodes of the tree represent organizations while the links represent the associations between organizations. Although natural language definitions exist for many associations, the terms are often heavily overloaded with numerous definitions so that their meaning becomes ambiguous. Two examples are the terms assigned and assignment of forces. This paper describes the representations chosen for the GFM organization servers, the basic semantics of those associations, and how they are applied to common situations.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jun 01, 2006
- Accession Number
- ADA463216
Entities
People
- Mike Boller
- Sam Chamberlain
Organizations
- United States Army Research Laboratory