Organizational Behavior, Decision Making and Virtual Simulations in Military Personnel

Vassia Karamanoli, Konstantinos Papachristopoulos, Nikolaos V. Karadimas

The aim of this study is to make a brief review of the research on Human Behavior Models (HBMs) in military simulations. The need to represent the behavior of individual combatants as well as teams and larger organizations is expanding as a result of increasing use of simulations for training, systems analysis, mission rehearsal, systems acquisition, joint force analysis and command decision aiding. Both for training and command decision aiding, the behaviors that are important to represent realistically are those that can be observed by the other participants in the simulation, including physical movement, detection and identification of enemy forces, as well as the aspects of behavior influenced by the cultural background, such as Beliefs, Desires and Intents. Innovative technologies provide opportunities to train the required skills in an interactive and realistic setting, for this reason are needed adequate models that generate the behavior of virtual players. Areas of modelling human behaviors are combat field situations and situations of high risk decision making, teamwork, culturally and emotionally affected behavior. In this paper we provide an overview of current research on human behavior models in military simulation, in order to be used to train military forces, develop force structures and design weapon systems. Implications for further research are made.