Abstract: This paper studies the multi-scale representation of battlefield situation at the conceptual level in different aspects, such as the concept of situation scale, scale transformation and typical styles of multi-scale representation. The scale of battlefield situation as the Cartesian product of two sets is defined, in which the first set contains space, time, and semantics; the other set contains breadth, granularity, and ratio. The scale transformation is classified into two types: scale downward and scale upward. The scale transformation is decomposed into three basic operations, i.e. breadth transformation, transformation and visualization derivation. The study points out that FIOP, LOD and Pliable Display Technology are three typical styles of multi-scale representation which can be used in scenarios of cooperative multitasking, different levels' cooperation under one specific task and fixed object tracking respectively.

Key words: battlefield situation, visualization, multi-scale representation, scale transformation