Valued-Information at the Right Time (VIRT)
See also Rapid Pro VIRT for the latest on this new Marine Corps project!
Moore’s Law and related progress in communications, sensors, and
storage mean that we are collecting and generating exponentially increasing
amounts of data about the environment. For intelligence, military and security
operations, this poses an enormous threat of glutting every processing entity,
especially mobile human operators who usually have limited communications
bandwidth and many competing demands for their attention. We must find a way to
deliver the most valuable information to each human and to other
resource-constrained processing entities. In light of the exponential increase
in available data, this means we must filter out an ever-increasing fraction of
data so that the recipient receives no more than he or it can digest in a
timely way. How can this be done? In cases where operators have planned
missions, their planning process identifies assumed conditions in the execution
environment that make the plan feasible or make alternative actions infeasible.
If new data invalidates those assumptions, the planners or operators need to
adapt because their plans are now based on faulty assumptions. In these cases,
we know the news about invalidated assumptions will be considered extremely
valuable to the operators. Our work on VIRT explains how to implement this
high-value filtering and demonstrates how to reduce traffic by as much as
99.999%.
Acevedo, R.A. (2006). Valued
Information at the Right Time (VIRT) and the Navy's Cooperative Engagement
Capability (CEC)--A Win/Win Proposition. Thesis Advisor: Rick Hayes-Roth;
Co-Advisor: Curtis Blais
Bordetsky, A. and F. Hayes-Roth (2006). Hyper-Nodes for Emerging Command and Control
Networks: The 8th Layer. 11th ICCRTS - Coalition Command and
Control in the Networked Era, Cambridge, UK
Bordetsky, A. and F. Hayes-Roth (2007). "Extending the OSI model for wireless battlefield networks: a design approach to the 8th Layer for tactical hyper-nodes." International Journal of Mobile Network Design and Innovation 2(2): 81-91.
Denning, P. J. (2006). "Infoglut." Communications of the ACM, 49(7): 15-19. This article highlights the problems VIRT addresses and explains why VIRT promises significant improvements.
Hayes-Roth, F. (2005) Foundations of
Event-Based Information Flows and Management (v0.1). Working notes, NPS,
November.
Hayes-Roth, F. (2005). Model-based Communication Networks and VIRT:
Filtering Information by Value to Improve Collaborative Decision-Making.
10th International Command and Control Research and Technology Symposium: The
Future of C2, McLean, VA, US Department of Defense, Command and Control
Research Program (CCRP) (PPT
here)
Hayes-Roth, F. (2006). Valued
Information at the Right Time (VIRT): Why less volume is more value in hastily
formed networks, NPS Cebrowski Institute.
Hayes-Roth, F. (2006). Two Theories of Process Design for Information
Superiority: Smart Pull vs. Smart Push. 2006 Command and
Control Research and Technology Symposium, San Diego, CA, US Department of
Defense, Command and Control Research Program (CCRP).
Hayes-Roth, F. (2006). Event Processing in the Global Information Grid
(GIG):Orders of Magnitude Advantage in Information Supply Chains through
Context-sensitive Smart Push ("VIRT"). 2nd Event
Processing Symposium, Oracle, Redwood Shores, CA.
Hayes-Roth, F. (2006). Model-Based Communication Networks and VIRT: Orders of Magnitude
Better for Information Superiority. MILCOM 2006, Washington,
DC, IEEE. (PPT here)
Hayes-Roth, F. (2006). Two Theories of Process Design for Information
Superiority: Smart Pull vs. Smart Push. 2006 Command and
Control Research and Technology Symposium, San Diego, CA, US Department of
Defense, Command and Control Research Program (CCRP).
Hayes-Roth, F. (2007). Getting ahead of
the Avalanche: How everyone can benefit from a near-infinite amount of
technology. MESDA's 15th Annual Conference, Maine's Software and
Information Technology Industry Association.
Hayes-Roth, F. (2012). VIRT: Maximum Bang-for-the-Buck in IT. Presentation to NRAC Panel on "Lightening the Information Load," July 25, San Jose. The paper here provides a concise set of 25 factual statements showing why VIRT provides the biggest known IT-based improvement to decision-making and execution outcomes. A supporting document available here shows global rates of growth in IT technologies that help document the assumed evolutionary context.
Hayes-Roth, F., C. Blais, et al. (2008). How to
Implement National Information Sharing Strategy. AFCEA-GMU
C4I Center Symposium: Critical Issues in C4I, George Mason University,
Fairfax, VA, AFCEA. (PPT
here)
Hoag, J. C. and F. Hayes-Roth (2006). Semantic Reasoning for Adaptive Management of Telecommunications
Networks. IEEE Systems, Man, Cybernetics (SMC), Taipei, IEEE.
Kemmitz, B. M. Measuring information glut: Applying systems thinking to the problem of e-mail overload. Masters Thesis, NPS. September, 2012.
Levitt, T. et al., (2011)
Morris, J. T. (2008).
Information management utilizing Valued Information at the Right Time (VIRT) as
applied to the Joint Terminal Attack Controller (JTAC) mission. Information Sciences. Monterey, CA,
Naval Postgraduate School.