Human Systems Integration (HSI) Engineering Analysis Tool (HEAT)

The Human Systems Integration (HSI) Engineering Analysis Tool, or HEAT, provides advice for engineers using material-design software, such as Computer Aided Design (CAD) tools, on how their design choices affect HSI domains. While there are nine HSI domains: Human Factors Engineering, Survivability, Manpower, Personnel, Training, Environment, Safety, Occupational Health, and Habitability that HEAT’s design can accommodate, we are concentrating on Human Factors Engineering, Survivability, Safety, and Habitability. HEAT is designed in a modular fashion to interface with the U.S. Marine Corps (USMC) Framework for Assessing Cost and Technology (FACT) or other tradespace analysis tools such as Concurrent Engineering Toolkit (CET). HEAT will advise designers by performing an HSI assessment on their initial design choices, or changes to deployed systems, including impact on Safety and Survivability, which could reduce injuries or save lives, while other assessments in the lifecycle could reduce costs. In combination with CET, or other tools, HEAT permits optimization on multiple variables simultaneously including cost and HSI. HEAT identifies HSI deficiencies, risks, and metrics for a wide variety of engineering systems across the Department of Defense (DoD) and is also designed to support the entire DoD 5000.2E acquisition lifecycle to help reduce lifecycle costs.