Decision Making in Complex Environments

Book excerpt: Many complex systems in civil and military operations are highly automated with the intention of supporting human performance in difficult cognitive tasks. The complex systems can involve teams or individuals working on real-time supervisory control, command or information management tasks where a number of constraints must be satisfied. Decision Making in Complex Environments addresses the role of the human, the technology and the processes in complex socio-technical and technological systems. The aim of the book is to apply a multi-disciplinary perspective to the examination of the human factors in complex decision making. It contains more than 30 contributions on key subjects such as military human factors, team decision making issues, situation awareness, and technology support. In addition to the major application area of military human factors there are chapters on business, medical, governmental and aeronautical decision making. The book provides a unique blend of expertise from psychology, human factors, industry, commercial environments, the military, computer science, organizational psychology and training that should be valuable to academics and practitioners alike.