SBIR-STTR Award

Recent events such as the fire on the USS GEORGE WASHINGTON have shown that communications and decision making can have a dominant impact on scenario outcomes involving shipboard fires. The processes by which information is learned, disseminated, assembled, and processed have a direct effect on where, when, and what kind of response is mounted by the crew. Current recoverability simulations, such as the Integrated Recoverability Model (IRM) are able to realistically emulate the interaction and dependencies of ships systems, initial systems configuration(s), structural and equipment damage from weapon effects, fire, flooding, and stability. The IRM is also able to simulate crew actions over time, but provides overly optimistic predictions of crew actions. Test & Evaluation Solutions, LLC, in partnership with Soar Technology, Inc., and Hughes Associates, Inc. proposes to address the crew behavior limitations of the IRM by developing a crew behavior module that works with the IRM Simulator and existing fire and flooding modules. The Soar software architecture provides a powerful platform to address the most complex aspects of human behavior and paired with the IRM can enable an innovative solution to simulating damage scenarios, including a more realistic crew response.

Benefit:
This effort will develop an agent based crew module for use with the Integrated Recoverability Model (IRM). The module will provide a more realistic representation of crew actions for battle damage scenarios. This technology would have universal applications as a design input for assessing the survivability of merchant cargo ships, cruise ships, passenger ferries, land based sky scrapers, and industrial facilities that are potential targets of terrorists and for developing design requirements to minimize potential casualties from such an attack. This technology may also be used to support emergency response planning to natural or man-caused disasters.

Keywords:
Agent Based Modeling, Agent Based Modeling, Simulation, recoverability

Recent events such as the fire on the USS GEORGE WASHINGTON have shown that communications and decision making can have a dominant impact on scenario outcomes involving shipboard fires. The processes by which information is learned, disseminated, assembled, and processed have a direct effect on where, when, and what kind of response is mounted by the crew. Current recoverability simulations, such as the Integrated Recoverability Model (IRM) are able to realistically emulate the interaction and dependencies of ships systems, initial systems configuration(s), structural and equipment damage from weapon effects, fire, flooding, and stability. The IRM is also able to simulate crew actions over time, but provides overly optimistic predictions of crew actions. Test & Evaluation Solutions, LLC, in partnership with Hughes Associates, Inc. proposes to address the crew behavior limitations of the IRM by developing a crew behavior module that works with the IRM Simulator and existing fire and flooding modules.

Benefit:
All new ship acquisition programs, and some modernization programs, are required to conduct realistic survivability testing (10 U.S. Code 2366). The costs of conducting this testing is significant, but can be reduced through the use of modeling and simulation (M&S). Development of agent based simulation M&S capability that can be used by multiple ship acquisition programs to improve the efficiency of labor intensive manual analysis processes, such as the Damage Scenario Based Engineering Analysis (DSBEA) and support Total Ship Survivability Trial (TSST) pre-trial predictions and post-trial analysis, would have wide-ranging cost reduction implications.

Keywords:
Simulation, Survivability, Damage, vulnerability, recoverability, Agent, Modeling