Collaborative Knowledge Management for Net-Centric Systems Navy SBIR FY2006.2 Sol No.: Navy SBIR FY2006.2 Topic No.: N06-148 Topic Title: Collaborative Knowledge Management for Net-Centric Systems Proposal No.: N062-148-0226 Firm: Anacapa Sciences, Inc. 301 East Carrillo Street 2FL P. O. Box 519 Santa Barbara, California 93102-0519 Contact: Susan Fischer Phone: (805) 966-6157 Web Site: anacapasciences.com Abstract: While the Armed Forces are successfully moving toward net-centric systems that provide vast amounts of real-time information about a situation, the distributed human users' capabilities to collaboratively create and share knowledge from that information has not received the attention it warrants. What is first needed is an understanding of the cognitive principles, grounded in empirical science, that govern collaborative knowledge management in distributed teams. Then, those principles may be used to develop technologies that support teams' abilities to collaboratively create, recognize, share, and otherwise manage the knowledge they have. The central objective of the proposed research is to apply cognitive theory to the development of a suite of technologies that will support and maintain shared situation awareness (SA) among a distributed team of warfighters. Fundamental to our approach is the assumption that team meta-knowledge is a key factor that determines successful collaborative knowledge management and shared SA. The proposed Phase I research is designed to further study the cognitive processes of team meta-knowledge, team awareness, and shared SA, as well as develop prototype IA, bot, and visualization technologies. Benefits: We offer a solution that will move net-centric capabilities toward human-centric systems that will produce true collaborative knowledge management in distributed teams. The solution is soundly grounded in current theory and findings on team cognition and highly influenced by what is known about transactive memory, metacognition, and team awareness. The proposed set of collaborative technologies targets knowledge interoperability, and provides feedback to teams about this team function. It will increase self awareness about team knowledge interoperability and will improve this team process. It will reveal information about the team that heretofore was unavailable to TMs, up and down the chain of command. Return