Research Summaries

Back An Anticipatory Analytics Approach to Refining ROEs for Non-Lethal Weapons: Preparation for Transition

Fiscal Year 2019
Division Graduate School of Operational & Information Sciences
Department Defense Analysis
Investigator(s) Hall, Steven B.
Sponsor Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate (DoD)
Summary Effectively managing engagements of host-nation ‘crowds’ such that both the immediate mission is achieved, and host-state legitimacy is supported, can be facilitated by the judicious use of nonlethal weapons (NLW) and the tactics, technics, and procedures (TTPs) by which they are used.
Human crowds vary in terms of the state of their: physical condition; emotional state; intentionality; and environmental circumstances. Understanding the crowd’s state trajectory, during engagement with security forces (SF) (and in part because of it), is critical to understanding how they will behave. The objective of this research is to enhance our understanding of that context dependent influence so as to more capably and reliably achieve our desired end-states.
One of the key factors determining our influence on a crowd’s state trajectory involves the extent to which the crowd comes to regard us as intending to engage them (i.e., participate in role reification with them) versus control them (i.e., define them as illegitimate participants and subject to sanctions). How effective the security forces are in negotiating mutually respectable ‘boundary’ conditions with the crowd is critical to generating these felicitous outcomes, but doing so can involve some nuanced engagement strategies. Crowds often don’t emerge with recognized narrative negotiating foci, i.e., leaders. Consequently, any specific concrete engagement of the crowd will often both play a role in giving (or denying) a ‘voice’ to the crowd as well as negotiating a mutually acceptable outcome. Such engagements involve both ‘carrots’ and ‘sticks’, but where and how we offer these punishments and rewards can make all the difference.
This effort is expected to build upon an existing research program funded by the Naval Research Program (NPS-17-M177-A) and the JNLWD (FY18 BA2 Crowd Modeling_182HE040-005). That program is focused on the delivery of an anticipatory analytics capability, leveraging multi-agent crowd behavior modeling, which provides a principled approach for refining the ROEs governing security force engagements with potentially hostile civilian crowds.
Keywords Crowd Modeling multi-agent modeling non-lethal effects modeling rules of engagement
Publications Publications, theses (not shown) and data repositories will be added to the portal record when information is available in FAIRS and brought back to the portal
Data Publications, theses (not shown) and data repositories will be added to the portal record when information is available in FAIRS and brought back to the portal