Susnea E. (2014). Data analysis to assist the decision making process in crisis situations, in Proceedings of "The International Annual Scientific Session Strategies XXI", Iss. 03 (pp. 120-124).

1. DATA ANALYSIS TO ASSIST THE
DECISION MAKING PROCESS IN CRISIS SITUATIONS
Elena SUSNEA
Associate Professor PhD, National Defence University “Carol I”
esusnea@yahoo.com
Abstract: In this paper we emphasize the importance of big data analysis to successfully handle crisis situations
characterized by uncertain and complex decision environment. Crisis situations are characterized by complex
decision environment, urgency, high stakes, unanticipated events, and information overload. Effective
management of crisis situations offers tremendous opportunities, mainly due minimizing threats. The speed of
the evolution of information and communications technology has made it to easier to generate, store, reuse and
share valuable information necessary for decision making in military operations. This huge database is named
big data. Good decisions involve the use of specialized software that supports decision-making process to
minimize negative effects of crisis situations. Knowledge discovery in database (KDD) poses a special challenge
to decision making process in crisis situations. The specific KDD technologies extend human capacity for
seeking and processing big data, and disseminating information to coordination support military actions.
Keywords: knowledge discovery in database, data analysis, decision making, crisis.
Introduction
The military operational environment of the 21st century will be characterized by
volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. Thus, crisis situations can often occur in
each moment. The main triggering factors which generated this environment are globalization
and regional integration. Moreover, the asymmetrical security threats request an adequate
answer from the states, regional and international organizations assuming responsibilities.
From a crisis management view, this means enhancing short-term response
effectiveness while, at the same time, reinforcing the development of long term, highly
reliable capacity that exhibit institutional constancy. Most important is show the military can
respond to rude surprises, adapt to novel situations, limit damage, and effectively draw
lessons from the fearfully unexpected in ways that improve the emergency response
capabilities of the next generation1
.
The crisis managers approach should be based on the premise maintain a moderate
level of conflict. It is important the crisis managers habilitated to deal with the crisis to be
able to maintain the control over the created situation and correctly react in order to limit the
possible damages. Consequently, the crises and conflicts resolution cannot be done only by
economic and diplomatic means because time has proven an instrument able to promptly
intervene where and when is more and more needed in order to preserve peace and stability in
the world2
.
A crisis on national level can create threats able to regard three core elements: public
safety, financial losses or image issues but, certainly, these threats are interrelated because, at
one hand, the wounds or victims will create financial and reputation damages, and, on the
other hand, the organization’s image is closely related to its financial component. An
effective management of such crisis threat treats sequentially. The crises management
1
LaPorte, T. R., Anticipating rude surprises – Reflections on crisis management without end. In D. E. Gibbons
(Ed.), Communicable crises: Prevention, response, and recovery in the global arena: 27-44. Charlotte, NC: IAP
Publishing, 2007.
2
Topor Sorin, Opinions regarding information evaluation methods within contemporary informational
operation. In: Proceedings. The 8-th International Conference Strategies XXI. 'Technologies - Military
Applications, Simulation and Resources'. Bucharest, April 5-6, 2012. Volume 3, Bucharesti, pp. 226-231.
120

2. mechanism provides to the decision-makers the information and arrangements needed in
order for them to be able to use the necessary means coordinated and in time.
The objective of this paper is to emphasize the importance of data analysis to
successfully handle crisis situations characterized by uncertain and complex decision
environment.
Decision making process in crisis situations
Crisis management is a process preventing or diminishing the negative consequences
a crisis can generate over the damaged parties3
. As process, crisis management is not just a
single element, but can be shared in three temporal phases: pre-crisis, answer to crisis and
post-crisis. The pre-crisis phase is connected to the prevention and preparation for crisis, the
answer to crisis is the moment when the managers decide to effectively react to crisis, and in
post-crisis there are looked for methods to better prepare the organization for a future crisis
and to fulfill the promises from crisis phase, including gathering follow-up information.
Usually the actors caught in the crisis remain suddenly without milestones, separated
from their normal grounds for decision, information, criteria and references and are unable to
measure or analyze the accumulation of elements the crisis can release. Therefore,
communication of the managing organization (body) inside and outside it must filter the
information regarding the prioritization of decisions related to the public opinion: individuals;
surrounding environment; property; financial involvements, etc.
Decisions must be making in certain circumstances, the so-called forced or non-
forced “decisional situations”, which appears as result of some stimuli or changes apparition
created by some factors4
. So, crisis situation, as forced decisional situation as deviation
requires decision support tools for the crisis managers to be helped in „keeping their options
open and not be susceptible to decision biases”5
. It is to be noted that forced decisional
situations presume reactive and corrective decisions to solve some problems that are sources
or worries or discomfort created by events and factors generally independent by the decision-
makers will.
Crisis resolution represents a range of decision-making process as political,
diplomatic, economic, informational, and military measures and actions applied individually
or combined in regard to the conception of crisis situation resolution therefore determining
the flexibility of decisions and actions.
Starting from the idea the information management is the process by which the
collected information are previously analyzed and then used by crisis managers in order to
make decisions, this activity’s importance in crisis situation must not be neglected. Thus, the
public relations plays essential role in this concern because it supports the development of
messages to be transmitted following the decision-taking process to different types of publics.
Therefore, the decisions taken in response to crisis are shared in two sections: initial answer
to crisis itself and the affirmation of future behavioral intentions.
There are differences between decision-making process and military decision-
making process. The decision process achieved through the use of informational decision
network comprises three main phases as follows: decisional situation awareness and data
3
Nitu Costinel, Sisteme integrate de cercetare şi mascare în mediul operaţional contemporan, Editura
Universităţii Naţionale de Apărare „Carol I”, Bucureşti, 2013, 168 p., ISBN 978-606-660- 059-0.
4
Susnea Elena, The Role of Knowledge Management Tools for Developing Leadership Competencies in Crisis
Management, Proceedings of the 9-th International Scientific Conference 'eLearning and Software for
Education'. Quality and efficiency in eLearning. Bucharest, April 25-26, 2013. Volume I. Bucharest, Editura
Universitara, 2013. pp. 345-349.
5
Schraagen, Jan Maarten and Ven van de, Josine G.M., Improving Decision Making in Crisis Response
Through Critical Thinking Support. Journal of cognitive engineering and decision making, 2 (4). 2008, pp. 311-
327.
121

3. collecting in order to formulate and clarify the decisional problem; projection (or
identification) of decisions’ alternatives and the election of principle and elements necessary
for the assessment and the decision-taking and initiation of decision implementation.
The military decision-making process is a single, established, and proven analytical
process used to assist the commander and his staff in developing estimates, plans and orders6
.
This process has seven steps: receipt of mission; mission analysis; course-of-action (COA)
development; COA analysis (war-game); COA comparison; COA approval; and orders
production7
.
Data analysis and knowledge discovery in database in crisis situations
Nowadays, in all the phases of crisis management, there are two fields playing major
roles in them: Knowledge Discovery in Database (KDD) and Decision Support Systems
(DSS).
The first field, Knowledge Discovery in Database (KDD) is increasingly used while
the amount of data in many systems grew larger in terabytes, and could no longer be
maintained manually. Moreover, the successful of any military action consists in discovering
underlying patterns in database, this process is considered essential. As a result, several
software tools were developed to discover hidden data and make assumptions, which form
part of artificial intelligence.
The second field, Decision Support Systems (DSS), is that supports the decision-
making process by typically resulting in ranking, sorting or choosing from among
alternatives. The decisions’ analysis is supported by a series of computer science methods,
techniques and tools specific as: influence diagrams and decisional trees, multi-attribute and
multi-objective decisions’ support, risk analysis, etc.8
The data analysis is a useful step that supports the commander and staff in
developing estimations and plan. Data and information management efficiency in dealing
with the crisis situation is provided by the informational cycle representing a conceptual
pattern regarding the manner of leading the information activities and actions by which the
data are transformed in information and are handed in to the decisional factors in order to be
taken proper crisis decisions for the better course of actions to be set.
The opportunities offered by the information and communication technology for the
military field regards the provisioning of conditions to enhance how the war is organized,
endowed and lead. The capacity of military action is decisively determined by level of
technology applied to all the compounds of the military operational environment9
.
Concretely, in the actual war we speak about sensors, radars and equipments to collect
information. These equipments are very highly connected to informational networks and
therefore is provided an adequate knowledge of battle space inclusively Global Positioning
System (GPS) for each fighter10
: Also, the increasing volume and detail of information
captured by sensors’ network, decisional network and execution network will fuel
exponential growth in data for the foreseeable future.
The amount of data generated in military operational environment has been
exploding, and analyzing large data sets—so-called big data—will become a key basis of
6
http://www.au.af.mil, accessed March 10, 2012
7
http://www.signal.army.mil, accessed March 10, 2012
8
Susnea Elena, Decision Support Systems in Military Actions: Necessity, Possibilities and Constraints, Journal
of Defense Resources Management, JoDRM Volume 3, Issue no. 2 (5), October 2012, pp.131-140.
9
Stoean Ioana Tania, Profesionalizarea resurselor umane, Editura Universităţii Naţionale de Apărare „Carol I”,
Bucureşti, 2013, p. 70.
10
Alberts David., Garstka John., Stein Frederick., Network centric warfare: developing and leveraging
information superiority, CCRP publication series, 2000, p. 2.
122

4. good decision. Big data technologies describe a new generation of technologies and
architectures, designed to extract value from very large volumes of a wide variety of data by
enabling high-velocity capture, discovery and/or analysis.
Heterogeneity, scale, timeliness, complexity, and privacy problems with big data
impede progress at all phases of the pipeline that can create value from data11
. However there
are many broad ways in which using big data analysis can create value in crisis situations: big
data analysis can unlock significant value by making information transparent and usable at
much higher frequency; crisis managers are using data collection and analysis to make better
management decisions; sophisticated techniques (artificial neural networks, decision tree) can
substantially improve military decision-making process; big data analysis can be used to
proactive actions in military operational environment.
Conclusions
We present a data analysis in both crisis management and military. Big data is in part
the result of cheaper data capture and storage technology, but it is also the culmination of a
cultural transformation in the world, whereby data are now viewed as a source of actionable
insights.
The main issue of crisis management is constituted by the extracting knowledge
from huge database. The data mining and knowledge discovery in database techniques help
crisis decision maker to gather the right information on the time.
Data analysis in military crisis management field includes specific rules, constraints,
know-how and entities behavior. The use of specific instruments needed for crisis
management presumes the use of high advanced techniques analysis and assessment of the
data came from the crisis situation and the identification of preventive measures.
Bibliography:
1. Alberts David., Garstka John., Stein Frederick., Network centric warfare:
developing and leveraging information superiority, CCRP publication series,
2000, p. 2.
2. LaPorte, T. R., Anticipating rude surprises – Reflections on crisis management
without end. In D. E. Gibbons (Ed.), Communicable crises: Prevention, response,
and recovery in the global arena: 27-44. Charlotte, NC: IAP Publishing, 2007.
3. Nitu Costinel, Sisteme integrate de cercetare şi mascare în mediul operaţional
contemporan, Editura Universităţii Naţionale de Apărare „Carol I”, Bucureşti,
2013, 168 p., ISBN 978-606-660- 059-0.
4. Schraagen, Jan Maarten and Ven van de, Josine G.M., Improving Decision
Making in Crisis Response Through Critical Thinking Support. Journal of
cognitive engineering and decision making, 2 (4). 2008, pp. 311-327.
5. Stoean Ioana Tania, Profesionalizarea resurselor umane, Editura Universităţii
Naţionale de Apărare „Carol I”, Bucureşti, 2013, p. 70.
6. Susnea Elena, The Role of Knowledge Management Tools for Developing
Leadership Competencies in Crisis Management, Proceedings of the 9-th
International Scientific Conference 'eLearning and Software for Education'.
Quality and efficiency in eLearning. Bucharest, April 25-26, 2013. Volume I.
Bucharest, Editura Universitara, 2013. pp. 345-349.
11
Yan Jean, Big Data, Bigger Opportunities - Data.gov’s roles: Promote, lead, contribute, and collaborate in
the era of big data, April 9, 2013.
123

5. 7. Susnea Elena, Decision Support Systems in Military Actions: Necessity,
Possibilities and Constraints, Journal of Defense Resources Management, JoDRM
Volume 3, Issue no. 2 (5), October 2012, pp.131-140.
8. Topor Sorin, Opinions regarding information evaluation methods within
contemporary informational operation. In: Proceedings. The 8-th International
Conference Strategies XXI. 'Technologies - Military Applications, Simulation and
Resources'. Bucharest, April 5-6, 2012. Volume 3, Bucharesti, pp. 226-231.
9. Yan Jean, Big Data, Bigger Opportunities - Data.gov’s roles: Promote, lead,
contribute, and collaborate in the era of big data, April 9, 2013.
10. Wood Colin, How Does the Military Use Big Data?, Emergency Management,
2014.
11. http://www.au.af.mil, accessed March 10, 2012
12. http://www.signal.army.mil, accessed March 10, 2012
124

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permission.