Operational Gaming and decision making

 

Since the purpose of my previous writings has been to create awareness regarding operations research and its efficacy in our decision making cycle. I found these definitions easy to comprehend. Here they go;

A simulation in which decision making is performed by one or more real decision makers is called “operational gaming.” Such simulations are commonly used in the study of interactions of decision makers as in competitive situations. Military gaming has long been used as a training device, but only relatively recently has it been used for research purposes. There is still considerable difficulty, however, in drawing inferences from operational games to the real world.

Experimental optimization is a means of experimenting on a system so as to find the best solution to a problem within it. Such experiments, conducted either simultaneously or sequentially, may be designed in various ways, no one of which is best in all situations.

Definitions taken from britannica 

LIGHT A LAMP FOR IT IS THE DARK HOUR.: Modeling and Simulation War gaming and Synthetic E...

LIGHT A LAMP FOR IT IS THE DARK HOUR.: Modeling and Simulation War gaming and Synthetic E...:  So in previous article we have talked about War gaming.  Its seems so but believe me its very safer than war itself and it has little to wi...

Modeling and Simulation War gaming and Synthetic Environement

 So in previous article we have talked about War gaming. 

Its seems so but believe me its very safer than war itself and it has little to with war. The name WAR got stick to it may be because it looks more appealing or perhaps has been used by military organizations 'vocally' so much that it became War Gaming. I like the term and the power of realism within it so much that time and again I want to emphasize the use of it. Understanding the key concept being the key. So lets see the following graph taken from a reference book:

The loop diagram explain the difference between the three. 

Modeling 
War gaming
Synthetic Environment

The war game sits on the top of the other two. Simply because the decision maker immersion power. You must have played board games, chess in your part of the world. Have you noticed how deeply involve the player is during each of the move. The process for each move is slow but involves human in the loop so much deeper extent. Synthetic environments and modeling have their own advantages of speed and dynamic scalability but involves lot of cost.  So its just like playing FIFA on PS4; you would need to set up a gaming station. Why not simply buy a football and catch the field. Cost versus immersion? 

But what makes these war games so interesting and reason of their novel use in strategy making houses of big businesses and think tanks? 

They introduce probability over absoluteness!! and we shall talk about that. 

War gaming and decision making

 

I had been thinking of writing something useful and spreading what i believe needs lot of attention. From futuristic point, some ideas and terms are attracting research and becoming multi billion dollar industry.

One of them is war gaming!!

Lets see it from military point of view 

NATO defines the term war gaming as “a simulation of a military operation, by whatever means, using specific rules, data, methods and procedures”. A typical war game involves representation of a combat situation being played by two sided adversarial players. Although by NATO definition a war game is not a tool for analysis rather than a tool for determining possible outcome of a laid down scenario. However, since the method itself provides opportunity of interaction between players acting as opposing forces, the outcome of these interactions can be studied for tailoring to own requirement. Therefore, a war game can be used to enable decision makers in understanding dynamics of war and in optimizing the decision making process of planning, acquisition, deployment and execution phases of a combat. It is this unique replication of near realism which simulates the outcome and answers our anticipation of ‘what will happen in battlefield’. Unlike other Operational Research techniques, war gaming simulates employment of our weapon mix in a given combat situation where the results can be analyzed to determine causes of win or loss.

Simply it is just like any other computer based game such as Street Fighter, Taken, FIFA and so on. So they actually prepare you for real time scenarios.  

 Do they have use in our daily lives, professoin,....?

yes Big time......

and we will discuss that later. kids are crying...!!