Operational Analyses To Determine Civil UAV Utility

The primary technical objective of the Phase I effort is to apply operations research techniques to estimate the utility (costs/benefits) of potential civil and commercial UAV applications. The Phase I option, as a transition from Phase I to Phase II, will focus on designing a computer program to model, simulate, and evaluate civil UAV systems, subsystems, technology, and applications. Operations research techniques used in Phase I for the cost/benefit and operational effectiveness analyses include: (a) integration of a current survey of prospective civil UAV users into the proposed study; (2) a functional analysis to determine key civil UAV systems, subsystems, technology, and applications; (3) a technology forecast to determine if the prospective UAV systems will be available to satisfy the functional requirements; (4) a multi-variate decision analysis using the analyic hierarchy process to define and evaluate measures of merit (effectiveness and efficiency) to perform trade-off analyses among the choices for civil UAV systems, subsystems, technology, and applications; (5) evaluation and ranking of the prospective systems; a final report, on paper and disk.