Models in Distributed C2 Experiment Lifecycles: The Collaborative Experimentation Environment as a Case Study

The Collaborative Experimentation Environment (CEE) is a distributed capability and means for designing and conducting joint Net Centric Experiments (NETEXs) where the goal is to explore multi-agency mission effectiveness, whether in national disaster response or responding to in-flight security incidents like terrorist activity. From the inception of the CEE project, the team has used models in deliberate ways across experiment lifecycles, from experiment conception and design, to post-hoc analysis. In this article, our goal is to broadly describe the purpose and evolution of our major model types—information flow/decision, event response, scenario, domain simulation, data collection and analysis, and architecture. Using this simple taxonomy, we describe each these models and provide examples. We then describe three completed experiments and identify crucial roles and considerations for models within those experiments. We conclude by offering some general lessons learned and identifying future work.