Safety Diagnostics and Degraded Operational Modes

Unmanned ground combat vehicles (UGCV) promise numerous ultimate military, civilian, and space applications. The focus of this research mainly deals with how a non-geometric hazard scenario may potentially lead to a mission ending situation and a non geometric hazard can be considered as any terrain feature or object that is adjudged to be non-traversable by virtue of its physical properties. The novelty of this research lies in how a UGCV in a military applications can overcome the challenges of traversing through ever changing natural obstacles when compared to the reinforcing obstacles which are encountered by autonomous vehicle in a conventional structured scenario (see Figure 1).Figure 1. Traversal across an off-road terrain facing uneven terrain and obstacles.An operational design domain (ODD) can help specify potential unsafe situations and restrict the vehicle’s operation within them. A complete ODD will guarantee that the safety arguments can be dealt in a streamlined manner and in scenarios of restricting the ODD, the overall availability of the system gets reduced. With a semantic ODD structure for the UGVC, the standard development of the safety process for an automotive system is achieved and with the already created safety protocols, the overall situation space is reduced during critical situations.DISTRIBUTION A. Approved for public release; distribution unlimited. OPSEC5045The process of identifying reduced operational domain (ROD) starts with the quantificationand analysis of maneuvers and further leads to the identification of critical situations. Criticalareas are conditions of the environment that cause unintentional behaviour which eventuallyleads to an accident. A state machine constituting nominal behaviour will form the basis for acomponent fault tree (CFT) which is used to identify conditions that cause critical situations.Subsequently, the corresponding risk of an identified critical situation is assessed as a part ofthis process.The safety diagnostics mainly depends on a probabilistic model-based controller examining adynamic environment in which the stochastic evolution depends on the input of observationsand the current behaviour of the UGCV. In order to model the real-life performance of safetycritical systems realistically and accurately, Markov chain and Bayesian filters are highlyuseful. The finite state essence of the discrete controller may possibly lead to incorrectbehaviour of the complete system if an unforeseen situation occurs and for which there is alack of any predefined contingency. For this purpose, it becomes important to have a sense ofa complete set of admissible scenarios and also to develop a structured decision-making processfor each of the previously mentioned scenarios. State machine and failure propagation treescan help in determining the failure probabilities which keep updating based on changes incircumstances and this would help define if a mission should continue. As a part of thisresearch, Markov decision process which forms the basis for decision making process isemployed to identify and compare a set of state sequences and this in turn would help inrealizing better maneuverability of the vehicle.The assignment of ROD can be accomplished with the complete risk assessment of the criticalsituations. By assigning the ROD, the aim of increasing the overall availability of the systemwhich degraded from the nominal driving behaviour is fulfilled and this would allow for thesafe operation of UGCV.

Synthesis of Two Decades of US EPA’s Ecosystem Services Research to Inform Environmental, Community and Sustainability Decision Making

A conceptual framework is helpful to understand what types of ecosystem services (ES) information is needed to support decision making. Principles of structured decision making are helpful for articulating how ES consideration can influence different elements in a given decision context resulting in changes to the environment, human health, and well-being. This article presents a holistic view of an ES framework, summarizing two decades of the US EPA’s ES research, including recent advances in final ES, those ES that provide benefits directly to people. Approximately 150 peer-reviewed publications, technical reports, and book chapters characterize a large ES research portfolio. In introducing framework elements and the suite of relevant US EPA research for each element, both challenges and opportunities are identified. Lessons from research to advance each of the final ES elements can be useful for identifying gaps and future science needs. Ultimately, the goal of this article is to help the reader develop an operational understanding of the final ES conceptual framework, an understanding of the state of science for a number of ES elements, and an introduction to some ES tools, models, and frameworks that may be of use in their case-study applications or decision-making contexts.

Closing Water and Nutrient Cycles in Urban Wastewater Management: How to Make an Academic Software Available to General Practice

Appropriate sanitation is crucial to alleviate pressures on environmental and human health hazards. Conventional (sewered) sanitation systems are often not viable in rapidly developing urban areas, where over 70% of the world population is expected to live in 2050. Freshwater is polluted and valuable resources such as nutrients and organics are lost. At present, many alternative sanitation technologies and systems are being developed with the aim to alleviate these pressures through (1) independency from sewers, water, and energy, therefore better adapted to the needs of fast and uncontrolled developing urban areas; and (2) contribute to a circular economy through the recovery of nutrients, energy, and water for reuse. Unfortunately, these innovations hardly find their way into practice because there exists a lack of data and knowledge to systematically consider them in strategic planning processes. To this end, we have developed SANitaTIon system Alternative GeneratOr (SANTIAGO)—a software that provides a comprehensive list of potential technologies and system configurations and quantifies their local appropriateness as well as their resource recovery and loss potentials. The aim is to provide a manageable but diverse set of decision options together with information needed to rank the alternatives and to select the preferred one in a structured decision making process. To make this software useful for practice, an easily accessible interactive user interface is required that (1) facilitates data collection and input; and (2) the exploration and presentation of results. As a first step in creating this user interface, we develop a framework that summarizes (1) the requirements that arise from practical applications of SANTIAGO, and (2) a comprehensive user understanding on the basis of 21 interviews with international practitioners caught in five personas: capacity developers, engineering experts, planners, researchers, teachers and trainers. This framework aids the development of any academic software into a tool useful for practice and policy makers. Here specifically, it enables contribution to sustainable development goals 6 (clean water and sanitation), and 11 (sustainable cities and communities).

Creation of clinical algorithms for decision-making in oncology: an example with dose prescription in radiation oncology

In oncology, decision-making in individual situations is often very complex. To deal with such complexity, people tend to reduce it by relying on their initial intuition. The downside of this intuitive, subjective way of decision-making is that it is prone to cognitive and emotional biases such as overestimating the quality of its judgements or being influenced by one’s current mood. Hence, clinical predictions based on intuition often turn out to be wrong and to be outperformed by statistical predictions. Structuring and objectivizing oncological decision-making may thus overcome some of these issues and have advantages such as avoidance of unwarranted clinical practice variance or error-prevention. Even for uncertain situations with limited medical evidence available or controversies about the best treatment option, structured decision-making approaches like clinical algorithms could outperform intuitive decision-making. However, the idea of such algorithms is not to prescribe the clinician which decision to make nor to abolish medical judgement, but to support physicians in making decisions in a systematic and structured manner. An example for a use-case scenario where such an approach may be feasible is the selection of treatment dose in radiation oncology. In this paper, we will describe how a clinical algorithm for selection of a fractionation scheme for palliative irradiation of bone metastases can be created. We explain which steps in the creation process of a clinical algorithm for supporting decision-making need to be performed and which challenges and limitations have to be considered.

Reconciling agile frameworks with IT sourcing through an IT sourcing dimensions map and structured decision-making

While there is a plethora of literature on IT Sourcing (ITS) strategy, little is known about the impact of large-scale agile frameworks on these strategies. Empirical evidence suggests that application of agile frameworks has an impact on governance and processes in large organisations including ITS strategies. Yet, the effects of such frameworks remain unrevealed. This research investigates the impact of agile frameworks on ITS decisions and the way organisations configure their ITS strategies. The research first studies literature to realise that there is a lack of empirical research on ITS strategies in organisations that use agile frameworks. Then, through a systematic literature review, ten different dimensions of ITS are identified and used as the required construct for a multiple-case study at six Netherlands-based organisations. The results reveal that four dimensions, namely sourcing model, location, pricing model, and relational governance are mostly affected by agile frameworks. Furthermore, after more than three years of utilising agile frameworks, case organisations still have not discovered a proper optimum point for these dimensions. The results also uncover that organisations are not fully aware of the impact of agile transformation on the process of ITS decision-making. This process may remain intact for years, resulting in continuous experimentation and trial and error of ITS strategies. We conclude that organisations should recognise the effects of agile frameworks to make ITS decisions accordingly. Additionally, adhering to a more rational and structured decision-making process helps organisations to more efficiently find proper optimum points for the dimensions of ITS strategy.