Layered Authoring of Ship Crew Agents for Recoverability Simulation (LASCARS)

Naval ships are among the most complex and costly engineered structures in existence. Operating in harsh and hostile environments, some ships will inevitably suffer damage. Recoverability is a critical ship design criterion, directly linked to robustness of mission capability and life safety. Modern simulation-based approaches to acquisition and design depend on adequate simulation of systems’ performance under varying environment, mission, and state conditions. Crew behavior simulations are currently lacking, and are required for recoverability simulations that adequately reflect the realities of firefighting and damage control efforts. We propose to develop a system supporting Layered Authoring of Ship Crew Agents for Recoverability Simulation (LASCARS). LASCARS will exploit unique strengths of Stottler Henke and its partner Alion to support better ship design. Innovations will include (1) incorporating human performance simulations into recoverability assessments, (2) structuring the human models into representational and behavioral layers, enabling controlled growth in model complexity and resource demands, (3) providing authoring tools to ease creation, selection, integration and debugging of agent modeling layers, (4) designing for integration with existing physical ship survivability simulation tools and approaches. During Phase I we will gather requirements, produce a proof-of-concept prototype, and develop a detailed Phase II design and work plan.