The C2 Agility Model in a Crisis Management Situation: An Empirical Test

Isabelle Turcotte – Université Laval

Marie-Eve Jobidon – DRDC Valcartier Research Centre

Philip S. E. Farrell – DRDC Toronto Research Centre

Sébastien Tremblay – Université Laval

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Presented by: Marie-Eve Jobidon, PhD

27^th ICCRTS – October 2022

Outline

• Context of the study
• C2 Agility
• Objectives and hypotheses
• Experimental design and analyses
• Results
• Conclusions

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Context of the Study – The TASSCM Project

• Tracking Agility and Self-Synchronization in Crisis Management (TASSCM) project
• Canadian DND-Academia-Industry research partnership
• Key objectives
• Provide systematic characterization of agility and self-synchronization in teamwork
• Enable and capture self-organizing behaviours

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Crisis Management Teams

• Defence and security environments are increasingly uncertain and dynamic
• High risk, time pressure, complexity and ambiguity
• Major operations require several players
• Different levels of government, departments, non-governmental actors and allies
• No one organization has the staff or capability to successfully act on its own
• Challenge:
• Organizations with different cultures, procedures and potentially conflicting mandates have to work together to accomplish a joint mission

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C2 Agility

• C2 must be adaptive and agile to respond to these environments
• Agility:
• Capability to successfully effect, cope with and/or exploit changes in circumstances (NATO SAS-085)
• Organizational agility can be used to set the conditions for efficiency by adopting situation-tailored C2 approaches

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4

C2 Agility Model

• 3 primary dimensions
• Allocation of decision rights
• Distribution of information
• Patterns of interaction

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C2 Agility Model (2)

• Organizations should transition between C2 approaches depending on situation complexity
• Transition dynamics impacted by factors such as:
• Size
• Resistance
• Stiffness
• Assumptions:
• ↓ Size: respond faster
• ↓ Resistance: facilitates transitions

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Objectives of the Study

• Examine transitions between C2 approaches described in the C2 Agility model
• Test the impact of team size, resistance to changing C2 approaches, and variations in situation complexity on the transition processes and the performance of CM teams

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Hypotheses

• Changes in complexity of the situation should prompt teams to redistribute resources among themselves in order to transition to a different C2 approach
• The level of redistribution of the resources should be associated with a better performance

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Microworld - C3Fire

• Simulated environment of C2 and communication
• Fires spread in real time, both autonomously and as a consequence of human actions
• Teams pursue multiple objectives:
• Limit spread of the fire
• Protect and save houses
• Rescue population

Design: C2 Approaches

De-conflicted

Collaborative

Design: Transition Dynamics

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• Team size
• 15 four-person teams and 15 six-person teams
• Each team includes 2 confederates
• Resistance
• High: confederate resisting C2 approach transition
• Low: confederate encouraging transition

Design: Complexity

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• Situation complexity
• High
• New fires and change in wind strength and direction
• Sabotage unit
• Low
• Help from aircraft filled with water

Procedure

Metrics

• Resources distribution
• Number of different users for each unit
• Performance
• Firefighting efficiency index

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• For each metric, a score 2 min before and 2 min after a high or low change in complexity was extracted

Results – Resources Distribution

• No effect of team size
• Effect of complexity
• Number of different users for units was higher when changing from high to low complexity than when changing from low to high complexity
• 3-way interaction
• Complexity, moment and resistance

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Resources distribution as a function of complexity, moment and resistance. Error bars represent standard errors

Results – Performance

• No main effect of team size but interaction with moment (before/after)
• Better performance after the event when changing from low to high complexity

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Mean performance as a function of change in complexity and moment for 6-person teams. Error bars represent standard errors

Efficiency index

Discussion

• Resources distribution suggests that teams adopted a C2 approach that matched situation complexity
• Overall: de-conflicted (less resources redistribution) in low complexity and collaborative (more redistribution) in high complexity
• When facing new events, teams transitioned from one C2 approach to another in response to situation complexity
• Resistance had a moderate impact on transition dynamics
• Low resistance facilitated the transition when a sudden drop in complexity was observed but did not have an effect when a sudden increase in complexity was experienced
• High resistance did not have an effect on transition: Teams behaved as they should have and adapted to situation complexity
• An increase in complexity prompted a more collaborative approach while a decrease in complexity prompted a more de-conflicted approach

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Discussion

• Team size did not have an impact on resources distribution
• While this finding is contrary to the assumption of the C2 Agility model, it is likely that the lack of an effect came from the little difference between the two team sizes compared
• Teams performed better when they had to face a high complexity situation for a little while than when they had to deal with a low complexity situation
• It is possible that better performance in high complexity was compelled from the stress and urgency to respond as the events worsened and situation complexity increased compared with the slower pace and low level of stress and urgency observed during a low complexity situation

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Conclusions

• This study aimed to validate empirically some assumptions of the C2 Agility model
• Teams respond to situation complexity by transitioning between C2 approaches
• Teams perform better when their C2 approach matches situation complexity
• Size and resistance appear, as presumed in the model, to have some influence over different variables
• Based on these early empirical findings
• The C2 Agility model seems to account for certain factors at play in transitioning between C2 approaches
• The model seems applicable to human and organizational behaviour
• Further work
• Scale up the experimental design and manipulations
• Expand on measures of performance and measures of effectiveness

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