Innovative Methods to Assess Technology Insertion Impact and Optimized Manning

The reduction in life-cycle costs for Naval vessels is critical for operating a cost efficient and robust Navy. Computer based simulations are an effective tool for human systems integration optimization, as well as for studying the risks associated with the complex interactions between crew and systems. The Sevaan Group will demonstrate the applicability of an innovative synthetic environment for driving optimal manning given a set of competing technologies, as well as provide better insight on how crew and technology interact and behave. The environment fuses traditional discrete event simulations for modeling deterministic technical naval systems with agent-based simulations to capture the behavior based upon cognitive and behavioral psychology. The modular environment empowers analysts to choose and integrate the best combination of available agent, discrete event, and physics based simulations to address the questions of manning. Naval researchers will benefit from the ability to study bottom-up crew conduct in addition to the traditional top-down, "cause and effect" approach. The environment embraces advances in complexity theory for simulating non-linear systems such as the interaction of crew to provide insight into emergent unforeseen behavior.