International Space Station Systems Engineering Case Study

This case study on the International Space Station considers what many believe to have been the ultimate international engineering project in history. The initial plans involved the direct participation of 16 nations, 88 launches and over 160 spacewalks-more space activities than NASA had accomplished prior to the 1993 International Space Station decision. Probably more important was the significant leap in System Engineering (SE) execution that would be required to build and operate a multi-national space station. In a short period of time, NASA and its partners had to work out how to integrate culturally different SE approaches, designs, languages and operational perspectives on risk and safety

International Space Station Systems Engineering Case Study

This case study on the International Space Station considers what many believe to have been the ultimate international engineering project in history. The initial plans involved the direct participation of 16 nations, 88 launches and over 160 spacewalks-more space activities than NASA had accomplished prior to the 1993 International Space Station decision. Probably more important was the significant leap in System Engineering (SE) execution that would be required to build and operate a multi-national space station. In a short period of time, NASA and its partners had to work out how to integrate culturally different SE approaches, designs, languages and operational perspectives on risk and safety

Risk-Aware Planning for Sensor Data Collection

With the emergence of low-cost unmanned air vehicles, civilian and military organizations are quickly identifying new applications for affordable, large-scale collectives to support and augment human efforts via sensor data collection. In order to be viable, these collectives must be resilient to the risk and uncertainty of operating in real-world environments. Previous work in multi-agent planning has avoided planning for the loss of agents in environments with risk. In contrast, this dissertation presents a problem formulation that includes the risk of losing agents, the effect of those losses on the mission being executed, and provides anticipatory planning algorithms that consider risk. We conduct a thorough analysis of the effects of risk on path-based planning, motivating new solution methods. We then use hierarchical clustering to generate risk-aware plans for a variable number of agents, outperforming traditional planning methods. Next, we provide a mechanism for distributed negotiation of stable plans, utilizing coalitional game theory to provide cost allocation methods that we prove to be fair and stable. Centralized planning with redundancy is then explored, planning for parallel task completion to mitigate risk and provide further increased expected value. Finally, we explore the role of cost uncertainty as additional source of risk, using bi-objective optimization to generate sets of alternative plans. We demonstrate the capability of our algorithms on randomly generated problem instances, showing an improvement over traditional multi-agent planning methods as high as 500% on very large problem instances

A Bridge and Engine Room Staffing and Scheduling Model for Robust Mission Accomplishment in the Littoral Combat Ships

The Navy’s Littoral Combat Ships were designed to be relatively small surface vessels for operations near a littoral shore theater. These ships were envisioned to be highly automated, networked, agile, stealthy surface combatants capable of defeating anti-access and asymmetric threats in the littorals with minimum manpower. To date, however, some of these ships have experienced significant engineering and propulsion plant failures that impacted mission accomplishment and were attributable, at least in part, to under staffing and over scheduling the human component of the automation-human operational environment. The critical human components on the Littoral Combat Ship are bridge and engine room staffing. Since the engineering plant has been the source of most major failures to date, this project sought to develop an engine room staffing and scheduling model for the Littoral Combat Ship class given a stated set of minimum mission objectives when operating under normal conditions – called “Condition III Underway Steaming”, which is used as the basis for official Navy manning calculations, and to provide recommendations for improved automation-human modeling. A survey of the crew of several LCS ships was conducted and the results were analyzed using exploratory data analysis and multiple joint correspondence analysis. Results of the survey analysis were applied to the design of a joint physical-cognitive-automation workflow analysis of critical procedures and failure modes as they map to four dimensions: fatigue, watch and maintenance tasking, and automation-human interface. Workflow analysis results were then simulated in an IMPRINT model of a typical watch period, and the results were evaluated against the four dimensions of the survey. The project validated that the four dimensions analyzed are indeed worthy of consideration in manpower models, and that IMPRINT has the potential, with a few modifications, to model joint physical-cognitive-automation workflows as an improvement to the current manpower-only models used in Navy ship design by accounting for human factors

Public safety mobile broadband: draft report

The draft report was released on 23 September 2015. You are invited to examine the report and to make written submissions by Wednesday 28 October 2015. This draft report looks at the best way to deliver a Public Safety Mobile Broadband (PSMB) capability for emergency services that is reliable, interoperable and works across Australia. The final report will be released in December 2015. Key points Public safety mobile broadband (PSMB) holds considerable potential to improve how the police, fire, ambulance and other public safety agencies (PSAs) deliver their services. It will allow frontline officers to access high-speed video, images, location tracking and much more. PSAs currently rely on their own radio networks for voice communications and some low-speed data. Mobile broadband use has been modest due to concerns that the quality of commercial services is insufficient to support \u27mission critical\u27 operations. The network capacity that PSAs require is uncertain. PSAs are seeking a higher quality of service than what is currently available on commercial networks. However, the standards required (in terms of coverage, reliability, security, priority access and so on) are not specific. There are many ways to provide a PSMB capability, including the construction of a dedicated network, a commercial approach, or some combination (hybrid) of the two. A dedicated network would give PSAs access to (and control over) their own PSMB network using their own parcel of spectrum. A commercial approach would mean that PSAs obtain PSMB services from one or more of the commercial mobile carriers through a contract for service. The Commission has undertaken an illustrative evaluation of the costs of several specific delivery options over a 20-year period. The cost of a dedicated network was estimated to be in the order of $6.1 billion, compared to$2.1 billion for a commercial option. Even the lowest-cost hybrid option is twice as expensive as a commercial option. A commercial option is cheaper because it requires significantly less \u27new investment\u27 than a dedicated or hybrid option as considerable existing infrastructure could be used or shared. Risk factors also influence the relative merits of different options. A dedicated network would likely take longer to deliver and offer less flexibility to scale up network capacity in the short term, relative to other options. Providing priority services under commercial or hybrid options would be more technically complex than under a dedicated option. There are also commercial risks arising from limited competition and supplier \u27lock-in\u27. The benefits of each option are not expected to vary markedly, since the options under evaluation have been designed to deliver a similar level of PSMB capability. On that basis, the cost evaluation is likely to provide the best guide to net community benefit for each option. On first principles, a commercial approach represents the most efficient, effective and economical way of delivering a PSMB capability to PSAs. Small-scale trials would provide an opportunity for jurisdictions to gain confidence in a commercial approach; gauge the costs, benefits and risks of PSMB; and develop a business case for a wider-scale roll out. Competitive procurement is essential. Splitting up tenders, leveraging infrastructure assets and insisting on open technology standards can help governments secure value for money. Achieving interoperability will require jurisdictions to agree on common technical standards. PSAs will also need to adapt their operations to make the most of PSMB. This includes protocols for sharing information and network capacity among agencies. Spectrum allocation is an Australian Government responsibility. Any spectrum made available for PSMB should be priced at its opportunity cost to support its efficient use

Maritime threat response

This report was prepared by Systems Engineering and Analysis Cohort Nine (SEA-9) Maritime Threat Response, (MTR) team members.Background: The 2006 Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) Cross-Campus Integrated Study, titled “Maritime Threat Response” involved the combined effort of 7 NPS Systems Engineering students, 7 Singaporean Temasek Defense Systems Institute (TDSI) students, 12 students from the Total Ship Systems Engineering (TSSE) curriculum, and numerous NPS faculty members from different NPS departments. After receiving tasking provided by the Wayne E. Meyer Institute of Systems Engineering at NPS in support of the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense, the study examined ways to validate intelligence and respond to maritime terrorist attacks against United States coastal harbors and ports. Through assessment of likely harbors and waterways to base the study upon, the San Francisco Bay was selected as a representative test-bed for the integrated study. The NPS Systems Engineering and Analysis Cohort 9 (SEA-9) Maritime Threat Response (MTR) team, in conjunction with the TDSI students, used the Systems Engineering Lifecycle Process (SELP) [shown in Figure ES-1, p. xxiii ] as a systems engineering framework to conduct the multi-disciplinary study. While not actually fabricating any hardware, such a process was well-suited for tailoring to the team’s research efforts and project focus. The SELP was an iterative process used to bound and scope the MTR problem, determine needs, requirements, functions, and to design architecture alternatives to satisfy stakeholder needs and desires. The SoS approach taken [shown in Figure ES-2, p. xxiv ]enabled the team to apply a systematic approach to problem definition, needs analysis, requirements, analysis, functional analysis, and then architecture development and assessment.In the twenty-first century, the threat of asymmetric warfare in the form of terrorism is one of the most likely direct threats to the United States homeland. It has been recognized that perhaps the key element in protecting the continental United States from terrorist threats is obtaining intelligence of impending attacks in advance. Enormous amounts of resources are currently allocated to obtaining and parsing such intelligence. However, it remains a difficult problem to deal with such attacks once intelligence is obtained. In this context, the Maritime Threat Response Project has applied Systems Engineering processes to propose different cost-effective System of Systems (SoS) architecture solutions to surface-based terrorist threats emanating from the maritime domain. The project applied a five-year time horizon to provide near-term solutions to the prospective decision makers and take maximum advantage of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) solutions and emphasize new Concepts of Operations (CONOPS) for existing systems. Results provided insight into requirements for interagency interactions in support of Maritime Security and demonstrated the criticality of timely and accurate intelligence in support of counterterror operations.This report was prepared for the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland DefenseApproved for public release; distribution is unlimited

RISKS IDENTIFICATION AND MITIGATION IN UAV APPLICATIONS DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS

With the recent advances in aircraft technologies, software, sensors, and communications, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) can offer a wide range of applications. UAVs can play important roles in applications, such as search and rescue, situation awareness in natural disasters, environmental monitoring, and perimeter surveillance. Developing UAV applications involves integrating hardware, software, sensors, and communication components with the UAV’s base system. UAV applications development projects are complex because of the various development stages and the integration complexity of high component. This research addresses the business and technical challenges encountered by UAV applications development and Project Management (PM). It identifies the risks associated with UAV applications development and compares various risk mitigation and management techniques that can be used. The study also investigates the role of Knowledge Management (KM) in reducing and managing risks. Furthermore, this study proposes a KM framework that reduces risks in UAV applications development projects. In addition, the proposed framework relies on KM and text mining techniques to enhance the efficiency of executing these projects

A new approach to risk analysis with a focus on organizational risk factors

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 2005.Includes bibliographical references (p. 235-255).Preventing accidents in complex socio-technical systems requires an approach to risk management that continuously monitors risk and identifies potential areas of concern before they lead to hazards, and constrains hazards before they lead to accidents. This research introduces the concept of continuous participative risk management, in which risks are continuously monitored throughout the lifetime of a system, and members from all levels of the organization are involved both in risk analysis and in risk mitigation. One aspect of effective risk management is accurate risk analysis that takes account of technical, human, and organizational factors. This research develops a new approach to risk analysis that improves on event-based models to include risks that do not depend only on component or subsystem failures, and incorporates both human and organizational factors. The approach enables the early identification of risk mitigation strategies, aids in the allocation of resources to best manage risk, and provides for the continuous monitoring of risk throughout the system lifecycle. Organizational factors have been identified as a significant aspect of accidents in complex socio-technical systems. Properly managing and assessing risk requires an understanding of the impact of organizational factors on risk. Three popular theories of organizational risk, normal accidents theory (NAT), high reliability organizations (HRO), and normalization of deviance, are reviewed. While these approaches do provide some useful insights, they all have significant limitations, particularly as a basis for assessing and managing risk. This research develops the understanding of organizational risk factors by focussing on the dynamics of organizational risk.(cont.) A framework is developed to analyze the strategic trade-offs between short and long-term goals and understand the reasons why organizations tend to migrate to states of increasing risk. The apparent conflict between performance and safety is shown to result from the different time horizons applying to performance and safety. Performance is measured in the short term, while safety is indirectly observed over the long term. Expanding the time horizon attenuates the apparent tension between performance and safety. By increasing awareness of the often implicit trade-offs between safety and performance, organizations can avoid decisions that unwittingly increase risk. In addition to this general dynamic, several specific common patterns of problematic organizational behaviour in accidents in diverse industries are identified. While accidents usually differ in the technical aspects, the organizational behaviour accompanying the accident exhibits commonalities across industries. These patterns of behaviour, or archetypes, can be used to better understand how risk arises and how problematic organizational behaviours might be addressed in diverse settings such as the space industry and chemical manufacturing. NASA specific archetypes are developed based on historical accounts of NASA and investigations into the Challenger and Columbia accidents. The NASA archetypes illustrate several mechanisms by which the manned space program migrated towards high risk.by Karen Marais.Ph.D