Risk Engineering, Sciences, Computation, and Informed Decisions

The ultimate goal of all health determination and risk assessment, performed during design-time as well as during operations, is to ensure safety, reliability, mission fulfillment capability and cost-effective operation of a system. Complex space-related infrastructure systems, such as spacecraft, space station, lunar and planetary bases, etc. will benefit from the proposed technology with increased reliability and safety. The integrated solution can also significantly shorten the prototype design cycle for commercial space systems as well by performing failure analysis and risk assessment early in the design and mature the design with appropriate enhancements in order to develop a robust and reliable system with known failure modes and planned mitigation options. NASA's current vision to enhance the level of autonomy for vehicle health management and mission planning and recovery makes the proposed effort worthy of funding from several branches within it. Clearly, establishing the technology and the software so that it readily operates as part of NASA's next generation missions especially those that require long-term operability and crew automation allows NASA to utilize the continuous health assessment and mission satisfiability information from QSI's tool for improved mission execution and reconfiguration while improving safety, mission success probability and reducing flight controller and crew workload.

The industries benefitting from rapid and automated health assessment, diagnostic analysis and recovery would include the operators of such reconfigurable systems whose failures have serious consequences and where high availability and operational reliability under long periods of unmonitored conditions are required. The space system industries (e.g., satellite manufactures and operators), unmanned vehicles such as UAV, AUV, Ground Vehicle manufacturers are the industrial sectors of interest and will be targeted as part of the commercialization effort. Among the non-NASA government agencies, DoD and Air-force and Navy are the most potential customer for the resulting technologies. Large scale military systems (systems of systems) such as NORAD, Space Command ground segments, the Joint Strike Fighter fleet, the Navy shipboard platforms, Submarine Commands and ballistic missile defense (BMD) systems can be potential areas to field the proposed technology. The product is also expected to be of commercial value to the manufacturers of DoD and military's remotely guided weapons and reconnaissance systems. A key industry that can benefit from this technology is the Oil and Natural gas industry that has developed large off-shore drilling operations such as in the Gulf of Mexico and North Sea. Commercial air transport, space-based systems, underwater, and maritime (both civil and military) sectors can also be the potential end user of the technologies developed from this effort. More »