Many routine tasks require an agent to perform a series of sequential actions, either to move to a desired end state or to perform a task of indefinite duration as efficiently as possible, and almost every task requires the consideration of multiple objectives, which are frequently in conflict...
The complex and emergent behavior of software systems makes information and data key components of this unpredictable environment. The use of a data-driven approach to identify and to accurately predict the sources of software project delays, cost overruns, failures, or successes may prove a...
In 2012, improperly compounded sterile products caused an outbreak of fungal meningitis and other fungal infections to become the largest outbreak of healthcare-associated infections in the United States. This outbreak, along with other adverse events associated with larger compounders...
With the increasing role that software systems play in our daily lives, software quality has become extremely important. Software quality is impacted by the efficiency of the software testing process. There are a growing number of software testing methodologies, models, and initiatives to satisfy...
The research was designed to determine whether systems engineering tools applied to a medical screening system could detect medical patterns in retrospective data sets. The methodology defined an evidence-based bundle as a multi-dimensional system that conformed to a parameter diagram. The...
Costs of aerospace missions have increased over the last twenty years, placing the future of the space program in jeopardy. A potential source for such growth can be attributed to the complex multidisciplinary and challenging nature of earth and space science instrument development. Design...
This praxis develops a new logistics optimized approach to improve utilization rates in the TNC model and provides an alternative to the predominant existing TNC model used by both Uber & Lyft, which has been found to be inefficient in providing modern transportation mobility services....
With the rapid increase of smartphones and tablets, security concerns have also been on the rise. Traditionally, Information Technology (IT) departments set up devices, apply security, and monitor them. Such approaches do not apply to today’s mobile devices due to a phenomenon called Bring Your...
Summary of contributions of this study: This study contributes new knowledge regarding the prescriptive utility of business intelligence systems and explicit knowledge objects in evidence-based management, and proposes a framework to better facilitate the management of business intelligence...
Software systems can become overly complex throughout the software development process, leading to increased error rates and failures. This praxis improves on the measurement of complexity, the first step in resolving this problem. Most software development technologies allow for incorporation of...
With today's uncertain funding climate (including sequestration and continuing budget resolutions), decision makers face severe budgetary challenges to maintain dominance through all aspects of the Department of Defense (DoD). To meet war-fighting capabilities, the DoD continues to extend...
In recent years, with budgetary constraints and ever-changing mission requirements, the government and private industries have shifted their focus towards component based system development. The development of systems with commercial off-the-shelf components expedites the development process and...
Flight safety has been an important topic for both academia and the industry. Aviation experts and authorities, as well as commercial airline administrators, have always been looking for improvements in the safety of flights. Researchers, on the other hand, have tried to model avionic fatalities...
The recent economic downturn has had global repercussions in all businesses alike. Competition is fierce and a survival of the fittest model is always present; fast delivery times and innovative designs ultimately translate into the enterprises' bottom line. In such market conditions, enterprises...
ABSTRACT NASA has had a decades-long problem with cost growth during the development of space science missions. Numerous agency-sponsored studies have produced average mission level development cost growths ranging from 23 to 77%. A new study of 26 historical NASA science instrument set...
Current day Network Intrusion Detection Systems have several shortcomings such as high rates of false positive alerts, low detection rates of rare but dangerous attacks and the need for constant human intervention and tuning. Daily reports of incidents appear in public media including major...
Organizations increasingly look to the use of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems to improve operational performance and advance revenue targets. However, research on ERP implementations highlights the regularity with which projects fail, adversely impacting enterprise performance and...
Cyber-attacks have escalated, causing decision makers to assess the trade-offs required to protect their organizations from such attacks. The use of benchmarking techniques to reduce cyber security risks would allow decision makers to use both qualitative and quantitative analyses. Systems...
Knowledge management (KM) has become an increasingly important aspect for achieving and maintaining competitive advantage across all types of organizations and businesses worldwide. However only limited research is available to understand how KM may be influenced by national culture. This...
Across the world, energy policies are promoting distributed generation systems in order to (1)improve the resilience of the energy infrastructure, (2) to mitigate the incidence of CO2 inducedclimate change, and (3) to improve cost effectiveness. When these three objectives are combined,a strong...
As systems become more complex the probability increases that they will exhibit emergent behavior that could lead to system failures or widespread and prolonged service interruptions. This research presents findings on the behavior of complex systems after they experience disruptive events that...
This research investigates the presence of cognitive biases in the risk management processes utilized at NASA, Department of Defense, and within the broader aerospace sector. A widely applied risk management tool in the aerospace sector is the risk matrix. Risk matrices were used in practice...
This dissertation represents a modeling and simulation approach toward determining whether distributed computing architectures (e.g., Cloud Computing) require state of the art servers to ensure top performance, and whether alternate approaches can result in optimized Quality of Service by...
The present research introduces a new approach to estimate the recovery costs of public property in the aftermath of a storm, by integrating Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Estimating recovery costs for a disaster is a current concern for emergency responders. This work focuses on applying...
AbstractA Systems Engineering Framework for Implementing aSecurity and Critical Patch Management Process in Diverse Environments(Academic Departments' Workstations)Use of the Patch Vulnerability Management (PVM) process should be seriously considered for any networked computing system. The PVM...
Identifying the best design configuration for a disaster-response team is important for minimizing total operation time and reducing the human cost of natural and manmade disasters. This research presents a simulation system that is able to optimally design a disaster-response team and evaluate...
This dissertation presents research that focuses on efficient allocation of defense resources to minimize the damage inflicted on a spatially distributed physical network such as a pipeline, water system, or power distribution system from an attack by an active adversary. The allocation...
Universities are havens for research development, with access to facilities, equipment, and, most importantly, people; idea exchange and knowledge development create an environment that is conducive to the growth of research productivity. The outcome of this productivity is contingent upon the...
This study utilizes a Grounded Theory approach to look at Knowledge Management through the lens of high-performing, high-functioning, mobile and independent professionals who hold the knowledge that organizations covet. Through these individuals the study explores alternative means for leveraging...
Federal Agencies and Private companies have many strategic initiatives they pursue in order to realize their visions. Due to the complexity of the strategic initiatives, there is a growing need for research on how enterprise architects and leaders should go about leading modernization and...
Risk identification is the most important step in the risk management process because risks that are unidentified are implicitly assumed and unmanaged. Projects face the challenge of increasing complexity and uncertainty. Risk management has taken advantage of powerful quantitative tools to...
Systems engineering measurements provide the decision maker a method to effectively manage uncertainty throughout the systems engineering lifecycle including entrance into key project milestones. Premature transition through project milestones or decision gates is likely to lead to cost and...
There are significant challenges involved in regulating the growing commercial human spaceflight industry. The safety of the crew and passengers should be protected; however, care should be taken not to overburden the industry with too many or too stringent, or perhaps inapplicable,...
In a 2007 memorandum, John Young, Under Secretary of Defense at that time, mandated the use of “competitive prototyping” strategies prior to the System Design and Development phase (Young, 2007). Department of Defense Instruction 5000.02 also includes considerations for prototyping in the...
With pressure on the U.S. Defense Acquisition System (DAS) to reduce cost overruns and schedule delays, system engineers’ performance is only as good as their tools. Recent literature details a need for 1) objective, analytical risk quantification methodologies over traditional subjective...
In this research, a framework is developed to determine the best design of risk matrices based on Cox's (2008) approach, where the performance of a risk matrix is evaluated through the probability of elimination error value. The development of research requires extension of Cox's (2008) approach...
Traditional, corporate-level risk mitigation procedures and management-led performance improvement efforts tend to ignore the relationship dynamics of Architect-Engineer design teams, and instead focus on the credentials and abilities of the individual designers, the contractual framework...
Systems engineering teams' value-creation for enterprises is slower than possible due to inefficiencies in communication, learning, common knowledge collaboration and leadership conduct. This dissertation outlines the surrounding people, process and technology dimensions for higher performing...
Building complex physics-based systems in a timely cost-effective manner, that perform well, meet diverse user needs, and have no bad emergent behaviors is a challenge. To meet these requirements the solution is to model the physics-based system before building it. Modeling and Simulation...
Due to increasing atmospheric CO2 concentration and its effect on global climates, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposes a Clean Power Plan (CPP) mandating CO2 reductions which will likely force the early retirement of inefficient, aging power plants. Consequentially,...
There is a paucity of research that empirically substantiates the theories presented in innovation driver literature to real-world user innovation networks. Trending hackathon-style mass collaboration events provide a microcosm in which to observe innovation as it happens. NASA’s International...
Often, multiple software products exist on the same server and vulnerability in one product compromises the entire system. It is imperative then, to perform a security risk assessment when selecting the software products that will become part of a larger system. Having a quantitative security...
Integration Readiness Level (IRL) can be an effective systems engineering tool to facilitate integration of System of Systems (SoS). Further research in systems integration, analysis of major SoS integration data, and analysis of expert survey inputs to SoS integration can enhance the current IRL...
Quality by Design (QbD) has been recognized as a superior manufacturing approach versus attempting to test in quality. Without designing for quality, the level of quality attainment (defect-free product) has been observed to plateau well short of six sigma, and efforts to further improve quality...
Systems engineers are faced with the challenge of adhering to broad systems engineering policies, while simultaneously tailoring systems engineering processes to meet the unique challenges facing their projects. Tailoring is often performed ad hoc, and determining which stages, steps, and...
Cyber-physical systems (CPS) are systems composed of distributed sensors, physical actuators and controlling computers that are interconnected through a computer network. Notable examples include: electric utility “smart grids” that can sense and optimize power distribution, transportation...
There are few studies investigating the association between enterprise-level knowledge management (KM) and project management (PM). Though few, these research studies have demonstrated that the available PM methods and approaches do not adequately include the necessary processes to derive maximum...
Cost overruns within the Department of Defense (DoD) acquisitions are widespread and have come to be accepted by program managers as a daunting challenge. A study of 35 major defense acquisition programs has identified requirement changes and unit quantity changes as the two main decision factors...
This investigative study demonstrated the benefits of addressing human considerations during the system development life cycle in order to have had long-term benefits to program managers and systems engineers. The approach was to use a retrospective content analysis of documents from weapon...
Many industries, such as healthcare, transportation, education, and other fields that involve large corporations and institutions, are complex systems composed of many diverse interacting components. Frequently, to improve performance within these industries, to move into new markets, or to...
Soccer is the most popular sport worldwide. Over time, the importance of soccer has grown beyond the sports domain, making it a large industry, a source of national pride, and the center of public attention in most countries. Due to this increased significance, it is highly important for soccer...
This dissertation sought to answer the question of why and how organizations succeed or fail in their implementation of the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. To accomplish this goal, reexamining and recalibrating the Chung (2007) ERP Success Model with the data from various industry...
Cloud computing service providers are currently viewed as innovative solutions to the global need for massive data systems because of their superior flexibility, scalability, and cost benefits. Cloud computing enabled by virtualized services is still constrained, however, by the capacities of the...
The majority of aviation accidents are caused by human error. Augmentedcognition and automation systems enhance pilot performance by evaluatingsystem limitations and flight precision and performance. This study examines thehuman-machine interface in cockpit design using the tenets of...
This thesis solves a systems-engineering problem of quantifying what amount of integration is reasonable, prior to initiating a project to develop an integrated system. Systems-integration is a later engineering activity, most difficult to perform, often a large consumer of resources, and can be...
Advances in technology have caused many systems to be plagued by obsolescence, which has operational, logistic, reliability, and cost implications. Proactively managing obsolescence is pivotal to its mitigation in mission systems. An important aspect of proactive obsolescence management is...
The use of information has dramatically changed over the past decade. In addition to traditional cyber-attacks, there has been an increase in the use of social-media to spread misinformation and opinion through the internet. The United States Department of Defense (DOD) is actively developing...
The agile methodology is the incremental, continuous development and delivery of software, providing a continuous stream of software solutions that meet the customer’s needs. The U.S. federal government has realized the advantages of this methodology and has decided to utilize this methodology in...
The human brain has been modeled using the cognitive cycle, a continuous loop of detection, interpretation, and action which guides decision-making and task performance. In human-driven queues, these elements can affect queuing performance. However, increasing the number of servers is the...
A successful Denial of Service (DoS) attack on a Critical Infrastructure (CI) can indirectly have devastating and irreversible effects to those that depend on its services. The mere possibility that physical destruction or loss of human life can result (indirectly) from a successful attack on a...
Current techniques in the development of system requirements include brainstorming, interviews, and prototyping. These techniques can be time consuming, and requirements gained from these techniques rarely meet the needs of users. Reworking requirements can be quite costly. Discrepancies in...
Complexity in systems acquisition can be characterized by descriptors in a system’s architecture that portray interrelationships and interdependencies, technology readiness levels, test and evaluation, integration, and technical requirements, lifecycle support and other factors. Well known...
There is a current need to study and understand the behaviors and characteristics of systems of systems. Studying a single system is relatively straightforward when compared to studying a system of systems. A system of systems has unique characteristics that distinguish it from a single system....
Insider threats are one of the most damaging threats to modern systems. The ubiquity of cybersecurity problems related to insider threats promoted various solutions over the years. However, effective solutions are undermined by mathematical algorithms and host-based event driven techniques that...
With latest IT trends in the industry, choosing the appropriate systems engineering methodology aligned with the project and team characteristics is often a challenge for project leads. The endorsement of Agile methods in systems engineering is no exception. Agile systems engineering is an...
The future of developing nations – both in terms of opportunities and challenges – is tied to the security of the information communications and technology (ICT) infrastructure. As many developing nations increase reliance on ICT to enable economic growth, they fail to commit an equivalent level...
Locating children missing from state care quickly is critical for their safety and overall wellbeing. This research was conducted to evaluate the time it takes to establish the team of teams, or human systems of system, to search for a missing child. Specifically, the time it takes for social...
Due to federal mandates, there is an increasing demand to advance renewable energy in the District of Columbia (D.C.) to deliver power. Utilities must find ways to achieve objectives while avoiding costly alternative compliance payments. In 2016, the District of Columbia’s Renewable Portfolio...
This Praxis describes a method for improving the accuracy of Use Case Point (UCP) effort estimation for software development projects. The thesis for the research is that an emergent factor exists in software development projects that is not considered in the UCP process. This emergent factor is...
Since the opening of the Washington Metropolitan Transit Authority (WMATA) in 1976, failures have negatively affected consistent railway service across the areas. Over the last three years, WMATA has attempted increase efforts to perform critical maintenance that would increase performance and...
Immature systems can be plagued by high costs, high risks, and schedule delays. System maturity models are utilized to quantitatively analyze a system’s readiness to indicate whether the system is prepared to proceed to the next acquisition phase during development. Most system maturity models...
Spare parts models have typically focused on the number of spares physically required to maintain system availability and optimize replacement policies, such as block or age replacement and variants thereof. In an era where additive manufacturing (AM), or 3D printing, as it is popularly known,...
Human error remains the highest symptomatic cause of system failure across multiple domains. Technology failure has seen a significant rate decrease through analyses and design changes, but human error causal factors have not experienced the same level of improvement. Designers and developers...
Over the last decade, healthcare supply chain (SC) costs have increased by 40 percent in the United States. A typical hospital’s SC costs account for 38 percent of the total, compared to less than 10 percent for most industries. Supply chain costs are the healthcare organizations’ second biggest...
Cyber-attackers exploit people, processes, and technologies to steal high-value organizational data. The corresponding attacks are complex, cost organizations millions of dollars to resolve, and require rapid-response, architecture-based mitigation. Consequently, Cybersecurity strategies that...