The Tourism Online Decision Support System (TODSS) process is consistent with John Boyd’s theory of conflict which is also known as the OODA Loop.

The OODA Loop describes the basic sequence of events which occur when leaders make decisions. Boyd’s theory relies on extensive research into adversarial “decision- to-action” cycles in aerial combat during the Korean War. Originally used describe engagements between fighter aircraft in the 1950’s,  and later to describe the command and control of land forces in the first Gulf War, the OODA Loop simplifies extremely complicated processes. John Boyd’s theories have had many successful applications within the realms of business and warfare. According to Boyd, in terms of leadership, the specific progression of making a decision is a cognitive process called OODA which stands for Observe, Orient, Decide and Act.

Initially the decision maker collects data and information, intelligence, about the existing situation and the environment in which the situation resides. The process of compiling data and information is referred to in the OODA loop as Observation. Analysis of the collected intelligence gives the decision maker support for decisions which will effect the current situation in order to improve it. The fusion of analysis and the decision maker’s judgment help the decision maker to visualize a number of future environments and the decision maker’s situation within those environments. In the OODA loop this situational analysis is referred to as Orientation. The decision maker reaches the deliberative state which is the point where the decision maker has to choose which actions to take and in which order to perform these actions to accomplish the over all goal which is referred to in the OODA loop as Decision. Finally, the execution of the decision is set in motion, which is referred to in the OODA loop as Action. The results of the action are observed as to the actions effect on the situation and the environment, thus reengages the OODA loop at the Observation stage.

The OODA loop theory, seamlessly transfers to the enterprise of comprehensive planning for, management of , and design for the tourism environment at the regional, local and individual levels for sustainable tourism development. OODA describes the basic sequences of the process of leadership and decision making within the tourism environment referred to as the vacationscape

More can be found on John Boyd and his OODA loop can be found in the book ; Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War (Little Brown) or John Boyd’s famous lecture “ A Discourse on Winning and Losing” is found at:

 www.d-n-i.net/second_level/boyd_military.htm.

The working definitions for the OODA loop within the TODSS project are as follows:

Observation:

Observation entails assembling information about the environment and the vacationscape in which the tourism entity exists (including the entities own effects and those of its competitors) Data is given a context relating to the tourism entities interactions with the vacationscape and the environment.

Orientation:

In Orientation data and information that were input in the observation phase are processed into knowledge, Knowledge is presented in the form of a view of the vacationscape, fused information known as the Common Operational Picture. This information is created from stakeholders memories of prior experience, (which may be explicit, implicit or tacit) genetic heritage (better known as natural talent), culture (i.e. paradigms) and analysis (deconstruction) of the existing view of the vacationscape. This intelligence is fused with geographic information and synthesized into a revised view of the vacationscape including possibilities for action

Decision

Making decisions consists of selecting from amongst a number of possible actions generated by the orientation, the best action to execute. This choice is tempered by wisdom, based on prior experience gained from previous cycles of the OODA Loop applied to knowledge of new possibilities.

Action

Action involves putting the decision to test by applying it to the vacationscape. The loop begins to repeat as the entity observes the results of its actions.  

The Tourism Online Decision Support System incorporates public participation, GIS, data mining, human observation, sharing and discussion of best practices, lessons learned and good design. The TODSS is calculated to be used to identify meaningful data and observations to support decisions that establish policy, design standards, best management practices and to monitor the outcomes.  The iterative nature of OODS provides for ongoing evaluations of policy, management and design.

TODSS is envisioned as a product that would be purchased by a Tourism Entity (TE), a group or umbrella organizations with an economic or environmental stake in tourism. Such purchasers could be: Community Development Agencies, Downtown Development Authorities, Tourism Associations, Metropolitan Planning Organizations, or Councils of Government. TODSS is envisioned as being administered by a 501c3 educational charity. 

To animate the TODSS process, the TE would define goals/objectives and measures which would include what the TE wanted to accomplish (goals, objectives, missions), how to measure success and failure (performance outcomes) and what the TE considers being reasonable expectations and risks. This start up information would be entered into the TODSS software through the startup wizard. This is the same process used by such shrink wrapped software as QuickBooks, which uses a setup wizard to create a new company within the software.

Information may need to be collected for the startup database through face to face interviews with the stakeholder groups, town hall meetings, charettes and virtual discussions lead by domain experts and facilitators. This exercise may require educating the TE and the community at large on sustainability, ecotourism, comprehensive land planning and information technology. Educational efforts may be periodically conducted to educate and enlighten the public as to the efforts of the TE and stakeholders. The focus is to determine the stakeholders shared ethics and values which are consistent with sustainable tourism development and can be manifest as policy, management or design initiatives.  This form of ethical and value based management aims to provide consistency of

·        The TE and it’s stakeholders collective mission (business philosophy)

·        The TE and it’s stakeholders collective strategy (courses of action to achieve mission and purpose)

·        TE governance (leadership, who determines the TE’s mission and regulates the activity of the stakeholder groups)

·        The corporate culture which is shared by the TE and it’s stakeholder groups

·        Inter-stakeholder communications

Baseline information is collected through an internal and external audit of information, and then added to the TODSS database.

The following describes how this OODA based TODSS’s’ process is envisioned to work within the tourism industry and assist in making land planning decisions.

1/ OBSERVATION

In the observation phase of the OODA loop, every effort is made to obtain, store, organize and fuse data and information into useable tourism intelligence.

During its normal course of operations, the TE first observes the situation, seeking both competitive tourism intelligence and information about the environment surrounding the vacationscape. The TE learns about the status of their current situation, the environment and the competition through a cycle of intelligence gathering. The intelligence gathering efforts will use both electronic means such internet searches and through the observational abilities of the TE and stakeholders. Using their password protected entry to the TODSS internet portal, TEs’, stakeholders, and their agents will be able to enter historical data and information relevant to the defined goals and objectives and performance measures. This information will be entered through questionnaires, checklists, report writing software and a GIS interface. The information is then uploaded into various TODSS relational databases and GIS Databases for analysis.

The input will be tailored to the needs of the TE and may include:

• Operational data, such as cost, quality, and sales
• Customer profiles and visitor activity group profiles

• Spatial information described as land planning and the Recreational Opportunity Spectrum (ROS) 
• Best practices and lessons learned including stakeholders experiences of prior successes and failures
• Environmental influences, factors both within and without the area of the vacationscape
• And  descriptive data such as who, what, where, when and how things happened in the context of the Visitor Activity Management Process (VAMP)

Through, the use of charettes and visioning sessions and critical observations, the values of the stakeholder community will be collected. It is vital to articulate these and ensure they are shared ideology and not just “motherhood” statements. The values of a community of practice are reflected not just through what people say but how they act. Stakeholders may idealistically hold claims to certain set of political or social values in public but pragmatically practice another set of values in private. The purpose and values the stakeholders wish to achieve (normally, maximizing stakeholder value while using resources in a sustainable manner) will be the lens through decisions will be viewed.

A major challenge is to utilize all the information available from an increasing number of information sources (sensors), and display this in a meaningful way to the stakeholders at all levels. The need for real time information sources to be fused with information residing within databases is important to achieve, and will be accomplished within large centralized TODSS databases (e.g., data warehouses and Geographic Information Systems) for efficient access and retrieval.

The fusion aspect for the TODSS is broken down into three major components that are equally important:

Information from different sensors (human or electronic) or databases must be translated, and fused together in one database. This must be done at sufficient speed, and the TODSS must be highly adaptive in order to take on new sensors as they emerge.

The information must be displayed in a meaningful way, so that the Stakeholder-Machine interface is as seamless as possible. This psychological component is very important, to make the TE and stakeholders able to observe and orient quickly. The Graphic User Interface (GUI) will be designed to reflect popular shrink wrapped software packages (windows based, desktop styled)

The display of pictures and images must be done with sufficient quality, so that there is no degradation of the actual information. If details are lost or delayed due to poor display technology, the higher tempo will increase the risk of poor decisions. This may require the use of high resolution technology and T-1 Bandwidth capabilities.

2/ ORIENTATION

After observing the vacationscape the TE must become oriented to its situation within that vacationscape regarding its competition and to all other vacationscape within a worldwide view. The orientation of TE reflects the characteristic thinking of the TE, its core values or core ideology. Values are principles in which the TE holds an emotional investment vis-à-vis their importance on how the TE means to operate.

When common values and visions are agreed upon or at least “the best alternative to an agreement” on values is agreed upon, the TE and stakeholders will create a Common Operational Picture (COP). The common operational picture is envisioned to be similar to a comprehensive plan, in that it will consist of both text and maps; it is an attempt to create a collective mental model of the vacationscape.

Having observed the situation, the TE will be able to orient itself to the situation by achieving, situational understanding based on a Common Operational Picture (COP) and make certain assumptions and analysis. The TE will try to figure out what the situation means to them and develop a visualization based on their situation. Since these sources of information are all imperfect (Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle) and may be manipulated by the competition (who will attempt to fog efforts to obtain competitive intelligence) they can never be totally accurate. The outcome of successful orientation is improved situational understanding. As information is continually entered into the TODSS database and fused into one recognized picture (COP), the Common Operational Picture will change daily if not hourly, and may best resemble a weather map in its display.  

Through the TODSS portal the TE and stakeholders can discuss through groupware, analyze (data & text mining), and examine best practices and lessons learned. Using the tools in the TODSS “toolbox”, the TE can analyze its operational data to detect, recognize and interpret patterns, to understand the current situation (COP) and to project what is likely to happen (scenario building), to discover any unusual occurrences, and to identify key influential factors. Analysis will reveal events, circumstances and issues associated with superior or substandard outcomes or performances. This process will include the use of the 6 core decision support tools bundled within the core of TODSS: Communications-Driven DSS, Data-Driven DSS, Document-Driven DSS, Knowledge-Driven DSS, Model-Driven DSS and GIS as a DSS.

Using groupware the TE will communicating with stakeholders and others such as government agencies and NPOs, to refine the TE mission (goals/objectives) and performance outcomes. Interpreting and determining the impact of the data acquired in the Observe OODA step involves a comprehensive measurement and analytical focus that identifies the issues, meanings and impacts of the TE’s current operational status and the likely future performance of the TE within the vacationscape

TODSS describes the actions of the TE based on three main attributes, Belief, Desire and Intention. The first attribute, Belief, is the TE’s mental model of the vacationscape. The second attribute, Desire, is the TE’s long-term goal which is a motivational state, i.e. the tempo (timeframe) and capability to create ordering between and among different goals. The third attribute, Intention, is the TE's decision point where it has to decided what to do and in which order. The decision point is reached by comparing external events and/or internal goals in the light of the information created from the Observational Module of TODSS. The output is used in the Decision Module of TODSS to create an execution plan about the things that have to be done which will be delivered as Policy Statements, Management Directives or Design Components.

3/ DECISION

Based on their orientation the TE makes a plan. The TE will put the decision into action by disseminating it through execution information. This execution information is envisioned to be delivered in the form of a policy document, management directive or design element for construction.

Preparation for execution of the plan  will be by shaping strategic initiatives to achieve the TE’s mission — establishing courses of action as best practices and operational guidelines. This is done by:

Have stakeholders use TODSS groupware to examine and discuss the data which was mined, the results that were forecast, lessons learned, best practices and to share resources such as white papers, literature reviews and research studies. Collaborative efforts will determine what works best and establishes this knowledge as wisdom (e.g., best practices, policies, procedures, business models, regulations).

The TE can publish and disseminate this knowledge and wisdom on their WebPages enabling quick and easy access to relevant literature, and to connect stakeholders via hyperlink to domain experts. The TE can determine a course of action be executed in the light of problems or opportunities for which there is no know solution or course of action, the resolution of which requires non-standard, innovative concepts and ideas. Alternative actions can be proposed, posted on the website and voted on electronically to aid in the decision making.

4/ ACTION

The Action step of the OODA-loop model uses the prior three steps result in the TE’s execution of a reactive response or the execution of a proactive initiative.

In the action phase the TE supervises the execute of the policy, management action or the construction of the design elements chosen, to ensure proper execution and to assess results through feedback from the common operational picture and staff. This assessment takes the TE back to the observation phase of the OODA loop. Having acted the TE caused the situation to change and altered the COP. The situational change may cause the competition to react, the tourists to reaction and their own staffs and stakeholders to react. All of this must be observed and entered into the TODSS to refresh the COP.

The OODA cycle is continuous rather than sequential: all of its activities occur simultaneously. The TODSS is designed to be a collection of continuously updated and accessible databases. TODSS allows decision makers to be more astute and agile than the competition by making decision support material available online for decision makers at all levels to aid in strategic operational or tactical decisions. This results in the ability for the decision maker to act in an agile fashion to changing market conditions or to competitive pressures, and not simply to react after the fact. The speed at which a decision maker using TODSS can react to competitor’s actions will enable the decision maker to gain competitive advantage by getting inside the competitions OODA loop. Being inside the competitions OODA loop can allow a decision maker to

• Obtain a technology lead
• Obtain and retain the best people
• Obtain the right investor, financial package or grant program
• Obtain regulatory approval
• Obtain the right partners for a lobbying effort

John Boyd’s theories have had many successful applications within the realms of business and warfare. The OODA Loop describes the basic sequence of events which occur when leaders make decisions. It is envisioned that the TODSS process which is consistent with Boyd’s theory of the OODA Loop will be equally successful in providing tourism intelligence in a manner that supports decision makers through all four movements of the Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act Loop.