Human System Integration Rapid Analysis Tool for Evaluation of System Concepts Early in Development

"This project will result in the design and prototype of a performance evaluation, workload assessment, and decision support tool for assessing human systems integration (HSI) aspects of US Navy and commercial ship designs. The designed tool will helpanalysts evaluate different manning concepts in terms of system performance, operator workload and cost. The tool will contain situational awareness, human error, and visualization components. The tool will support a flexible analysis approach throughwhich system designers can apply varying levels of fidelity to the analysis of manning and automation alternatives. The tool will include a large database of predecessor system maintenance, equipment and job data. The tool will also include a database ofscenarios, events, and watchstander and maintainer tasks that the user can utilize and/or modify for a new analysis.The tool will be able to help designers assess the impact of reduced manning levels on performance in various dimensions of the systems (e.g., levels of automation required, allocation of tasks to human operators, workload of the reduced crew, subsequentrisk associated with degraded performance due to excessive workload, etc.). Tool users will evaluate and trade-off these factors to determine the ultimate success of the system in terms of human performance, cost and safety risk. The issues that arecurrently driving the acquisition of military and commercial hardware systems