Patent ID: 8468112

Claim:
A method of providing decision support for planning in an environment where a competition for use of resources exist and events affecting the planning are occurring dynamically, the method comprising: providing a system model of an actual system; building, in a dynamic factored manner, an envisionment related to at least some aspects of the system model, wherein the building of the envisionment includes: constructing a plurality of kernel situations from complete situations of the system model, wherein each kernel situation does not interact with any other kernel situation; invoking a conventional envisioner to process each constructed kernel situation individually, wherein the conventional envisioner sees only the kernel situation it is presently processing and the processing identifies any new combined kernel situations, wherein new combined kernel situations occur when, after being processed, at least two different kernel situations have an intersection and/or interaction; invoking the conventional envisioner to process each new combined kernel situation individually, wherein the envisioner sees only the new combined kernel situation it is processing, and wherein the processing is repeated for all new combined kernel situations; and generating a factored envisioning graph including all processed kernel situations and new combined kernel situations; generating output based on the envisionment related to at least some aspects of the system model; and making changes to the actual system, based on the generated output, thereby changing a configuration or operation of the actual system.