Defense forces have always invested a great deal of their resources in training. In recent times, changes in the complexity and intensity of operations have reaffirmed the importance of ensuring that warfighters are adequately prepared for the environments in which they are required to work. The emergence of new operational drivers such as asymmetric threats, urban operations, joint and coalition operations and the widespread use of military communications and information technology networks has highlighted the importance of providing warfighters with the competencies required to act in a coordinated, adaptable fashion, and to make effective decisions in environments characterized by large amounts of sometimes ambiguous information. While investment in new technologies can make available new opportunities for action, it is only through effective training that personnel can be made ready to apply their tools in the most decisive and discriminating fashion. There are many factors which can have an impact on the efficacy of training and many issues to consider when designing and implementing training strategies. These issues are often complex and nuanced, and in order to grasp them fully a significant investment of time and energy is required. However, the requirement to respond quickly to ever-changing technology, a high operational tempo and minimal staffing may preclude many in today's defense forces from seeking out all such resources on their own. This edited collection provides brief, easy-to-understand summaries of the key issues in defense training and simulation, as well as guidance for further reading. It consists of a collection of short essays, each of which addresses a fundamental issue in defense training and simulation, and features an up-to-date reference list to enable the reader to undertake further investigation of the issues addressed. In essence, this book provides the optimum starting point, or first resource, for readers to come to terms with the important issues associated with defense training and simulation. The contributions are written by leading scholars from military research institutions in the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, as well as selected researchers from academic and private sector research institutions.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Australasian Simulation Congress, ASC 2019, held in Gold Coast, Australia in September 2019. The 10 papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 17 submissions. They provide a forum for sharing progresses in the areas of human dimensions; gaming experience; design and application; search and rescue; defence-oriented technology and training.

This volume is an initiative undertaken by the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society’s Task Force on Security, Surveillance and Defense to consolidate and disseminate the role of CI techniques in the design, development and deployment of security and defense solutions. Applications range from the detection of buried explosive hazards in a battlefield to the control of unmanned underwater vehicles, the delivery of superior video analytics for protecting critical infrastructures or the development of stronger intrusion detection systems and the design of military surveillance networks. Defense scientists, industry experts, academicians and practitioners alike will all benefit from the wide spectrum of successful applications compiled in this volume. Senior undergraduate or graduate students may also discover uncharted territory for their own research endeavors.

Design Recommendations for Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITSs) explores the impact of intelligent tutoring system design on education and training. Specifically, this volume examines “Authoring Tools and Expert Modeling Techniques”. The “Design Recommendations book series examines tools and methods to reduce the time and skill required to develop Intelligent Tutoring Systems with the goal of improving the Generalized Intelligent Framework for Tutoring (GIFT). GIFT is a modular, service-oriented architecture developed to capture simplified authoring techniques, promote reuse and standardization of ITSs along with automated instructional techniques and effectiveness evaluation capabilities for adaptive tutoring tools and methods.

The Generalized Intelligent Framework for Tutoring (GIFT) Users Symposia began in 2013 with the goal to capture successful implementations of GIFT from the user community and to share recommendations leading to more useful capabilities for GIFT authors, researchers, and learners. The attached proceedings resulted from papers accepted for the 4th Annual GIFT Users Symposium.

GIFT, the Generalized Intelligent Framework for Tutoring, is a modular, service-oriented architecture developed to lower the skills and time needed to author effective adaptive instruction. Design goals for GIFT also include capturing best instructional practices, promoting standardization and reuse for adaptive instructional content and methods, and methods for evaluating the effectiveness of tutoring technologies. Truly adaptive systems make intelligent (optimal) decisions about tailoring instruction in real-time and make these decisions based on information about the learner and conditions in the instructional environment. The GIFT Users Symposia were started in 2013 to capture successful implementations of GIFT from the user community and to share recommendations leading to more useful capabilities for GIFT authors, researchers, and learners.