When the game’s on the line...
Situational management is critical

  

 

 

Here’s a tense situation, familiar to many U.S. football fans. It’s fourth

down, just inches from the goal line, and just seconds left in the game

as the clock ticks down. The team is trailing and needs to score a

touchdown to win... 

 

The play is sent in from the coaches, and fans are holding their breath.

On the snap of the ball, the running back takes it from the quarterback

and leaps high in the air, toward the goal line ... and scores. 

 

For the winning team, this is situational management at its best. 

 

                                                                   The coaches were well aware of the score, the time left, the distance to  
                                                                    score, the abilities of their players at that moment matched up against the
                                                                    opponent’s players, the opponent’s history for similar situations, the
                                                                    condition of the grass, the weather, and many other factors relevant to the 
                                                                    situation at hand. 

 

                                                                   The coaches had the intelligence to reason with all these factors, in real
                                                                    time, to predict what might happen for alternative plays...

 

And they took control by concluding which play gave the best probability of scoring and then prescribing that play to the players, who then successfully executed it as a tightly orchestrated set of body-bruising actions. 

 

Examples of the importance of well-done situational management abound. Beyond U.S. football, it is essential to success in soccer, hockey, basketball, volleyball, and many other sports. In business, it is vital to preventing fraud. In our everyday lives, we manage driving situations in real time as we seek to arrive at destinations safely, quickly and economically. 

 

In Industrial Internet of Things (IoT) systems – like an electric grid – situational management is key to ensuring reliability and efficiency. 

 

At SmartCloud, we are leaders in applying artificial intelligence to situational management. We create solutions for mission-critical operations in business and industry that improve real-time management of complex situations. 

 

To better understand the value of what we do, let’s define what a situation is and introduce the role of AI.  

 

It's a situation

 

At SmartCloud, we consider a situation to be a pattern, or combination, of inputs and outputs of interest within a managed system. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 What makes a pattern to be of interest includes:

 

• Alignment with goals -- such as operational performance, costs, or safety

• Multiple states -- can be a problem, opportunity, or normal situation

• Changes over time -- has a past, present, and future

• Quantifiable -- the inputs and outputs can be quantified in a useful way

 

The managed system is what’s being controlled to achieve goals. Situational management is the making of changes to that system in order to reach desired situational states and associated goals. 

 

Your car's situation

 

​To illustrate these concepts, consider your car as the managed system. 

 

Your goals as the driver are to arrive safely, on time, and at minimal

fuel costs. Situations of interest might include: unsafe speed during

bad weather, high risk for a speeding ticket, excessive fuel consumption,

or being late to your destination due to heavy and slow traffic. Hopefully

the situational state is that all is normal – you’re safe, ticket free and

on schedule. 

 

Situational inputs are numerous – accelerator position, gear, road types, road maps, speed limits, other cars, weather conditions, and so on. Outputs include car speed, engine RPMs, fuel consumption, etc.

 

Situational management in this example involves making decisions and taking actions for your car – how far to push down on the accelerator at any moment, which gear to use, which route to take, and so on. Do it well and you’ll get to where you’re going safely, on time and with the most fuel left in your tank. Do it poorly and you might have an expensive traffic ticket, find yourself in a ditch, or be late. 

 

​Be Aware, Be Intelligent and Take Control

 

Based on decades of experience in building AI-driven solutions for some of the world’s most complex operations, including those within utilities, governments, telecommunications, aerospace, manufacturing, oil and gas, and finance, we at SmartCloud have come to realize that successful situational management requires three levels of reasoning: 

 

​1. Situational Awareness

 

This is about “seeing” situations and their many inputs and outputs.

When operators can fully see, they can more effectively apply intelligence

to and control situations of interest. 

 

However, visualizing the data for inputs and outputs in a meaningful way can be very difficult.