An Ontology for Unconventional Conflict

This book describes the ontology structure, types of actors, their potential actions, and ways that actions can affect the things that are part of the conflict. An ontology of unconventional conflict supports the understanding of unconventional conflict in general. It also provides a tool for understanding and investigating a particular unconventional conflict. The ontology specifies the relations among the elements and supports creating a description of a particular situation.

Unconventional conflict spans the range from natural disasters through human disagreements to irregular warfare (up to conventional war). Unconventional conflict involves damage to things and injuries to people; however, the critical factors are the actions, reactions, and opinions of people, including political, military, economic, social, infrastructure, and information components. This ontology supports and will appeal to military strategists, political scientists, economists, and politicians in understanding their planning for, and managing of these conflicts.

DEAN S. HARTLEY III is the Principal of Hartley Consulting. He is also the Chief Operating Officer (COO) and Vice President of Sisyphus Energy, Inc. (SEI). Previously he was a Senior Member of the Research Staff at the Department of Energy Oak Ridge Facilities (Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Y12 Site and East Tennessee Technology Park). Hartley graduated Summa Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa from Wofford College in 1968, majoring in mathematics and foreign languages. He received his Ph.D. in piecewise linear topology from the University of Georgia in 1973.
Hartley is a past Vice President of the Institute for Operations Research and Management Science (INFORMS), a current Director of the Military Operations Research Society (MORS), past President of the Military Applications Society (MAS), and a member of the INFORMS Simulation Society (ISIM). He also serves as the Technical Advisor for Operations Research and Modeling to the International Psychopharmacology Algorithm Project (IPAP). Hartley is a Senior Fellow with the George Mason University School of Public Policy, a consulting resource for the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS), Modeling, Virtual Environments & Simulation (MOVES) Institute, and a Research Fellow with the University of Alabama in Huntsville, Center for the Management of Science and Technology (CMOST).
Hartley has published Unconventional Conflict: A Modeling Perspective, Predicting Combat Effects, co-authored OOTW Analysis and Modeling Techniques (OOTWAMT) Workshop Proceedings and NATO Code of Best Practice for C2 Assessment, contributed ten chapters to eight other books, and written more than 150 articles and technical documents. His expertise includes modeling of combat, DIME/PMESII (diplomatic, information, military, economic / political, military, economic, social, information, infrastructure) operations, verification, validation, and accreditation (VV&A) of models, psychopharmacology modeling, and simulation. Hartley received the Koopman Prize for best publication in military operations research in 1994 and the Steinhardt Prize for lifetime achievement in operations research in 2013.