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Theses and Dissertations

2010

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Full-Text Articles in Computer Engineering

Network Security Toolkit Including Heuristic Solutions For Trust System Placement And Network Obfuscation, Gabriel H. Greve Dec 2010

Network Security Toolkit Including Heuristic Solutions For Trust System Placement And Network Obfuscation, Gabriel H. Greve

Theses and Dissertations

For Part I, a supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) network consists of a group stations and substations in a portion of the power grid. The use of Internet technology in SCADA communications as well as other factors has caused vulnerabilities. One idea to help mitigate this risk is to strategically place trust nodes to compartmentalize and secure the SCADA systems without disturbing its finely honed processes. The trust nodes combine firewall and intrusion detection technology to provide more secure communication. An optimal solution to this problem has already been developed using a mixed-integer linear programming model. Because the problem …

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Knowledge-Based Decision Support In Department Of Defense Acquisitions, Clifton L. Hicks Sep 2010

Knowledge-Based Decision Support In Department Of Defense Acquisitions, Clifton L. Hicks

Theses and Dissertations

Despite numerous reform efforts over the past 30 years, acquisition programs in the Department of Defense (DoD) continue to experience cost overruns and schedule delays. One contributing factor is the decision-making process used by defense officials. The General Accounting Office (GAO) has stated that ‘poor program outcomes are the lack of widespread adoption of a knowledge-based acquisition process within DoD despite polices that support such a process. A knowledge-based business case at the outset of each program would alleviate overpromising on cost, schedule, and performance and would empower program managers.’ Effective decision-making for acquisition programs is very important. It not …

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Applying Image Matching To Video Analysis, Adam J. Behring Sep 2010

Applying Image Matching To Video Analysis, Adam J. Behring

Theses and Dissertations

Dealing with the volume of multimedia collected on a daily basis for intelligence gathering and digital forensics investigations requires significant manual analysis. A component of this problem is that a video may be reanalyzed that has already been analyzed. Identifying duplicate video sequences is difficult due to differences in videos of varying quality and size. This research uses a kd-tree structure to increase image matching speed. Keypoints are generated and added to a kd-tree of a large dimensionality (128 dimensions). All of the keypoints for the set of images are used to construct a global kd-tree, which allows nearest neighbor …

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Hijacking User Uploads To Online Persistent Data Repositories For Covert Data Exfiltration, Curtis P. Barnard Sep 2010

Hijacking User Uploads To Online Persistent Data Repositories For Covert Data Exfiltration, Curtis P. Barnard

Theses and Dissertations

As malware has evolved over the years, it has gone from harmless programs that copy themselves into other executables to modern day botnets that perform bank fraud and identity theft. Modern malware often has a need to communicate back to the author, or other machines that are also infected. Several techniques for transmitting this data covertly have been developed over the years which vary significantly in their level of sophistication. This research creates a new covert channel technique for stealing information from a network by piggybacking on user-generated network traffic. Specifically, steganography drop boxes and passive covert channels are merged …

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Reputation-Based Internet Protocol Security: A Multilayer Security Framework For Mobil Ad Hoc Networks, Timothy H. Lacey Sep 2010

Reputation-Based Internet Protocol Security: A Multilayer Security Framework For Mobil Ad Hoc Networks, Timothy H. Lacey

Theses and Dissertations

This research effort examines the theory, application, and results for a Reputation-based Internet Protocol Security (RIPSec) framework that provides security for an ad-hoc network operating in a hostile environment. In RIPSec, protection from external threats is provided in the form of encrypted communication links and encryption-wrapped nodes while internal threats are mitigated by behavior grading that assigns reputations to nodes based on their demonstrated participation in the routing process. Network availability is provided by behavior grading and round-robin multipath routing. If a node behaves faithfully, it earns a positive reputation over time. If a node misbehaves (for any number of …

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Improving The Quality Of Service And Security Of Military Networks With A Network Tasking Order Process, Matthew D. Compton Sep 2010

Improving The Quality Of Service And Security Of Military Networks With A Network Tasking Order Process, Matthew D. Compton

Theses and Dissertations

This research presents a Network Tasking Order process that collects mission plans, network capabilities, and historical records to build a Network Tasking Order (NTO). The NTO document directs the form and usage of the network, much like an Air Tasking Order (ATO) directs the usage of air power. The NTO process is fleshed out with the content and format of the NTO given herein for the first time. Tools such as topology control algorithms are then shown through simulation to improve the quality of service of the network by finding favorable ways to connect the assets identified during the NTO …

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Mission Assurance: A Review Of Continuity Of Operations Guidance For Application To Cyber Incident Mission Impact Assessment (Cimia), Brian L. Hale Jun 2010

Mission Assurance: A Review Of Continuity Of Operations Guidance For Application To Cyber Incident Mission Impact Assessment (Cimia), Brian L. Hale

Theses and Dissertations

Military organizations have embedded information technology (IT) into their core mission processes as a means to increase operational efficiency, improve decision-making quality, and shorten the sensor-to-shooter cycle. This IT-to-mission dependence can place the organizational mission at risk when an information incident (e.g., the loss or manipulation of a critical information resource) occurs. Non-military organizations typically address this type of IT risk through an introspective, enterprise-wide focused risk management program that continuously identifies, prioritizes, and documents risks so an economical set of control measures (e.g., people, processes, technology) can be selected to mitigate the risks to an acceptable level. The explicit …

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Deterministic, Efficient Variation Of Circuit Components To Improve Resistance To Reverse Engineering, Daniel F. Koranek Jun 2010

Deterministic, Efficient Variation Of Circuit Components To Improve Resistance To Reverse Engineering, Daniel F. Koranek

Theses and Dissertations

This research proposes two alternative methods for generating semantically equivalent circuit variants which leave the circuit's internal structure pseudo-randomly determined. Component fusion deterministically selects subcircuits using a component identification algorithm and replaces them using a deterministic algorithm that generates canonical logic forms. Component encryption seeks to alter the semantics of individual circuit components using an encoding function, but preserves the overall circuit semantics by decoding signal values later in the circuit. Experiments were conducted to examine the performance of component fusion and component encryption against representative trials of subcircuit selection-and-replacement and Boundary Blurring, two previously defined methods for circuit obfuscation. …

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Attaining Realistic Simulations Of Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks, Derek J. Huber Jun 2010

Attaining Realistic Simulations Of Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks, Derek J. Huber

Theses and Dissertations

Mobile Ad-hoc Networks (MANET) are comprised of wireless systems that communicate without the assistance of centrally managed routers or base stations. MANET research and development has increased due to computing technologies offering smaller, faster, smarter, and more power efficient platforms to operate on. Largely the testing and evaluation of new and existing MANET protocols has resided in simulation environments. This is due in part to the complexities and expenses incurred when conducting real world tests. Many researchers have come to recognize that these current simulations tend to assume away critical components of the MANET domain. These assumptions are made either …

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A Dynamically Configurable Log-Based Distributed Security Event Detection Methodology Using Simple Event Correlator, Justin M. Myers Jun 2010

A Dynamically Configurable Log-Based Distributed Security Event Detection Methodology Using Simple Event Correlator, Justin M. Myers

Theses and Dissertations

Log event correlation is an effective means of detecting system faults and security breaches encountered in information technology environments. Centralized, database-driven log event correlation is common, but suffers from flaws such as high network bandwidth utilization, significant requirements for system resources, and difficulty in detecting certain suspicious behaviors. This research presents a distributed event correlation system which performs security event detection, and compares it with a centralized alternative. The comparison measures the value in distributed event correlation by considering network bandwidth utilization, detection capability and database query efficiency, as well as through the implementation of remote configuration scripts and correlation …

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Developing A Hybrid Virtualization Platform Design For Cyber Warfare And Simulation, Kyle E. Stewart Jun 2010

Developing A Hybrid Virtualization Platform Design For Cyber Warfare And Simulation, Kyle E. Stewart

Theses and Dissertations

Virtualization is a technique used to model and simulate the cyber domain, as well as train and educate. Different types of virtualization techniques exist that each support a unique set of benefits and requirements. This research proposes a novel design that incorporates host and network virtualization concepts for a cyber warfare training platform. At the host level, hybrid virtualization combines full and operating system virtualization techniques in order to leverage the benefits and minimize the drawbacks of each individual technique. Network virtualization allows virtual machines to connect in flexible topologies, but it also incurs additional processing overhead. Quantitative analysis falls …

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Use Of Negation In Search, Kristen M. Lancaster Jun 2010

Use Of Negation In Search, Kristen M. Lancaster

Theses and Dissertations

Boolean algebra was developed in the 1840s. Since that time, negation, one of the three basic concepts in Boolean algebra, has influenced the fields of information science and information retrieval, particularly in the modern computer era. In Web search engines, one of the present manifestations of information retrieval, little use is being made of this functionality and so little attention is given to it in the literature. This study aims to bolster the understanding of the use and usefulness of negation. Specifically, an Internet search task was developed for which negation was the most appropriate search strategy. This search task …

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Performance Evaluation Of A Field Programmable Gate Array-Based System For Detecting And Tracking Peer-To-Peer Protocols On A Gigabit Ethernet Network, Brennon D. Thomas Jun 2010

Performance Evaluation Of A Field Programmable Gate Array-Based System For Detecting And Tracking Peer-To-Peer Protocols On A Gigabit Ethernet Network, Brennon D. Thomas

Theses and Dissertations

Recent years have seen a massive increase in illegal, suspicious, and malicious traffic traversing government and military computer networks. Some examples include illegal file distribution and disclosure of sensitive information using the BitTorrent file sharing protocol, criminals and terrorists using Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technologies to communicate, and foreign entities exfiltrating sensitive data from government, military, and Department of Defense contractor networks. As a result of these growing threats, the TRacking and Analysis for Peer-to-Peer (TRAPP) system was developed in 2008 to detect BitTorrent and VoIP traffic of interest. The TRAPP system, designed on a Xilinx Virtex-II Pro Field …

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Flexible Computing Architecture For Real Time Skin Detection, Matthew P. Hornung Mar 2010

Flexible Computing Architecture For Real Time Skin Detection, Matthew P. Hornung

Theses and Dissertations

In both the Air Force and Search and Rescue Communities, there is a current need to detect and characterize persons. Existing methods use red-green-blue (RGB) imagery, but produce high false alarm rates. New technology in multi-spectral skin detection is better than the existing RGB methods, but lacks a control and processing architecture to make them efficient for real time problems. We hypothesize that taking a minimalistic approach to the software design, we can perform image preprocessing, feature computation, and skin detection in real time. A number of applications require accurate detection and characterization of persons, human measurement and signature intelligence …

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Real Time Fault Detection And Diagnostics Using Fpga-Based Architecture, Nathan P. Naber Mar 2010

Real Time Fault Detection And Diagnostics Using Fpga-Based Architecture, Nathan P. Naber

Theses and Dissertations

Errors within circuits caused by radiation continue to be an important concern to developers. A new methodology of real time fault detection and diagnostics utilizing FPGA based architectures while under radiation were investigated in this research. The contributions of this research are focused on three areas; a full test platform to evaluate a circuit while under irradiation, an algorithm to detect and diagnose fault locations within a circuit, and finally to characterize Triple Design Triple Modular Redundancy (TDTMR), a new form of TMR. Five different test setups, injected fault test, gamma radiation test, thermal radiation test, optical laser test, and …

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Handshaking Protocols And Jamming Mechanisms For Blind Rendezvous In A Dynamic Spectrum Access Environment, Aaron A. Gross Mar 2010

Handshaking Protocols And Jamming Mechanisms For Blind Rendezvous In A Dynamic Spectrum Access Environment, Aaron A. Gross

Theses and Dissertations

Blind frequency rendezvous is an important process for bootstrapping communications between radios without the use of pre-existing infrastructure or common control channel in a Dynamic Spectrum Access (DSA) environment. In this process, radios attempt to arrive in the same frequency channel and recognize each other’s presence in changing, under-utilized spectrum. This paper refines existing blind rendezvous techniques by introducing a handshaking algorithm for setting up communications once two radios have arrived in the same frequency channel. It then investigates the effect of different jamming techniques on blind rendezvous algorithms that utilize this handshake. The handshake performance is measured by determining …

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Analysis Of A Rumor Routing Protocol With Limited Packet Lifetimes, Peter R. Francik Mar 2010

Analysis Of A Rumor Routing Protocol With Limited Packet Lifetimes, Peter R. Francik

Theses and Dissertations

Wireless sensor networks require specialized protocols that conserve power and minimize network traffic. Therefore, it is vitally important to analyze how the parameters of a protocol affect these metrics. In doing so, a more efficient protocol can be developed. This research evaluates how the number of nodes in a network, time between generated agents, lifetime of agents, number of agent transmissions, time between generated queries, lifetime of queries, and node transmission time affect a modified rumor routing protocol for a large-scale, wireless sensor network. Furthermore, it analyzes how the probability distribution of certain protocol parameters affects the network performance. The …

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Visually Managing Ipsec, Peter J. Dell'accio Mar 2010

Visually Managing Ipsec, Peter J. Dell'accio

Theses and Dissertations

The United States Air Force relies heavily on computer networks to transmit vast amounts of information throughout its organizations and with agencies throughout the Department of Defense. The data take many forms, utilize different protocols, and originate from various platforms and applications. It is not practical to apply security measures specific to individual applications, platforms, and protocols. Internet Protocol Security (IPsec) is a set of protocols designed to secure data traveling over IP networks, including the Internet. By applying security at the network layer of communications, data packets can be secured regardless of what application generated the data or which …

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Developing An Effective And Efficient Real Time Strategy Agent For Use As A Computer Generated Force, Kurt Weissgerber Mar 2010

Developing An Effective And Efficient Real Time Strategy Agent For Use As A Computer Generated Force, Kurt Weissgerber

Theses and Dissertations

Computer Generated Forces (CGF) are used to represent units or individuals in military training and constructive simulation. The use of CGF significantly reduces the time and money required for effective training. For CGF to be effective, they must behave as a human would in the same environment. Real Time Strategy (RTS) games place players in control of a large force whose goal is to defeat the opponent. The military setting of RTS games makes them an excellent platform for the development and testing of CGF. While there has been significant research in RTS agent development, most of the developed agents …

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Reputation-Based Trust For A Cooperative, Agent-Based Backup Protection Scheme For Power Networks, John F. Borowski Mar 2010

Reputation-Based Trust For A Cooperative, Agent-Based Backup Protection Scheme For Power Networks, John F. Borowski

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis research explores integrating a reputation-based trust mechanism with an agent-based backup protection system to improve the performance of traditional backup relay methods that are currently in use in power transmission systems. Integrating agent technology into relay protection schemes has been previously proposed to clear faults more rapidly and to add precision by enabling the use of adaptive protection methods. A distributed, cooperative trust system such as that used in peer-to-peer file sharing networks has the potential to add an additional layer of defense in a protection system designed to operate with greater autonomy. This trust component enables agents …

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High Power Microwave (Hpm) And Ionizing Radiation Effects On Cmos Devices, Nicholas A. Estep Mar 2010

High Power Microwave (Hpm) And Ionizing Radiation Effects On Cmos Devices, Nicholas A. Estep

Theses and Dissertations

Integrated circuits (ICs) are inherently complicated and made worse by increasing transistor quantity and density. This trend potentially enhances concomitant effects of high energy radiation and local or impressed electromagnetic interference (EMI). The reduced margin for signal error may counter any gain in radiation hardness from smaller device dimensions. Isolated EMI and ionizing radiation studies on circuits have been conducted extensively over the past 30 years. However, little focus has been placed on the combined effects. To investigate the effect of combined EMI and ionizing radiation, two complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) inverter technologies (CD4069 and SN74AUC1G04) were analyzed for …

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Component Hiding Using Identification And Boundary Blurring Techniques, James D. Parham Jr. Mar 2010

Component Hiding Using Identification And Boundary Blurring Techniques, James D. Parham Jr.

Theses and Dissertations

Protecting software from adversarial attacks is extremely important for DoD technologies. When systems are compromised, the possibility exists for recovery costing millions of dollars and countless labor hours. Circuits implemented on embedded systems utilizing FPGA technology are the result of downloading software for instantiating circuits with specific functions or components. We consider the problem of component hiding a form of software protection. Component identification is a well studied problem. However, we use component identification as a metric for driving the cost of reverse engineering to an unreasonable level. We contribute to protection of software and circuitry by implementing a Java …

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Modeling Computer Communication Networks In A Realistic 3d Environment, Charles R. Rowell Jr. Mar 2010

Modeling Computer Communication Networks In A Realistic 3d Environment, Charles R. Rowell Jr.

Theses and Dissertations

Communication network simulations have typically been visualized in the past through 2D representations, but this is insufficient for battlefield network scenarios. Visual representations of battlefield networks greatly benefit from 3D visualization due to its ability to retain asset location. This research investigates the feasibility of modeling a typical battlefield communication network in a realistic 3D manner and discusses the effects of doing so. The result is an open source, 3D network visualization tool that can create highly intuitive connected battlefield scenes, enabling the user to quickly comprehend network state. It highlights mobile assets, packet movement, and node connectivity while allowing …

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A Distributed Network Logging Topology, Nicholas E. Fritts Mar 2010

A Distributed Network Logging Topology, Nicholas E. Fritts

Theses and Dissertations

Network logging is used to monitor computer systems for potential problems and threats by network administrators. Research has found that the more logging enabled, the more potential threats can be detected in the logs (Levoy, 2006). However, generally it is considered too costly to dedicate the manpower required to analyze the amount of logging data that it is possible to generate. Current research is working on different correlation and parsing techniques to help filter the data, but these methods function by having all of the data dumped in to a central repository. Central repositories are limited in the amount of …

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Codifying Information Assurance Controls For Department Of Defense (Dod) Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (Scada) Systems (U), Eddie A. Mendezllovet Mar 2010

Codifying Information Assurance Controls For Department Of Defense (Dod) Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (Scada) Systems (U), Eddie A. Mendezllovet

Theses and Dissertations

Protecting DoD critical infrastructure resources and Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems from cyber attacks is becoming an increasingly challenging task. DoD Information Assurance controls provide a sound framework to achieve an appropriate level of confidentiality, integrity, and availability. However, these controls have not been updated since 2003 and currently do not adequately address the security of DoD SCADA systems. This research sampled U.S. Air Force Civil Engineering subject matter experts representing eight Major Commands that manage and operate SCADA systems. They ranked 30 IA controls in three categories, and evaluated eight SCADA specific IA controls for inclusion into …

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Augmenting Latent Dirichlet Allocation And Rank Threshold Detection With Ontologies, Laura A. Isaly Mar 2010

Augmenting Latent Dirichlet Allocation And Rank Threshold Detection With Ontologies, Laura A. Isaly

Theses and Dissertations

In an ever-increasing data rich environment, actionable information must be extracted, filtered, and correlated from massive amounts of disparate often free text sources. The usefulness of the retrieved information depends on how we accomplish these steps and present the most relevant information to the analyst. One method for extracting information from free text is Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), a document categorization technique to classify documents into cohesive topics. Although LDA accounts for some implicit relationships such as synonymy (same meaning) it often ignores other semantic relationships such as polysemy (different meanings), hyponym (subordinate), meronym (part of), and troponomys (manner). To …

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Scalable And Fault Tolerant Group Key Management, Nicholas A. Lupien Mar 2010

Scalable And Fault Tolerant Group Key Management, Nicholas A. Lupien

Theses and Dissertations

To address the group key management problem for modern networks this research proposes a lightweight group key management protocol with a gossip-based dissemination routine. Experiments show that by slightly increasing workload for the key update mechanism, this protocol is superior to currently available tree-based protocols with respect to reliability and fault tolerance, while remaining scalable to large groups. Java simulations show that the protocol efficiently distributes keys to large groups in the midst of up to 35 percent node failure rates. In addition, it eliminates the need for logical key hierarchy while preserving an overall reduction in rekey messages to …

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Utilizing The Digital Fingerprint Method For Secure Key Generation, Jennifer C. Anilao Mar 2010

Utilizing The Digital Fingerprint Method For Secure Key Generation, Jennifer C. Anilao

Theses and Dissertations

This research examines a new way to generate an uncloneable secure key by taking advantage of the delay characteristics of individual transistors. The user profiles the circuit to deduce the glitch count of each output line for each number of selectable buffers added to the circuit. The user can then use this information to generate a specific glitch count on each output line, which is passed to an encryption algorithm as its key. The results detail tests of two configurations for adding a selectable amount of buffers into each glitch circuit in order to induce additional delay. One configuration adds …

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Static And Dynamic Component Obfuscation On Reconfigurable Devices, Camdon R. Cady Mar 2010

Static And Dynamic Component Obfuscation On Reconfigurable Devices, Camdon R. Cady

Theses and Dissertations

Computing systems are used in virtually every aspect of our lives. Technology such as smart phones and electronically controlled subsystems in cars is becoming so commonly used that it is virtually ubiquitous. Sometimes, this technology can be exploited to perform functions that it was never intended to perform, or fail to provide information that it is supposed to protect. X-HIA was shown to be effective at identifying several circuit components in a significantly shorter time than previous identification methods. Instead of requiring a number of input/output pairings that grows factorially or exponentially as the circuit size grows, it requires only …

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Using Decision Analysis To Select Facility Maintenance Management Information Systems, Marchello T. Graddy Mar 2010

Using Decision Analysis To Select Facility Maintenance Management Information Systems, Marchello T. Graddy

Theses and Dissertations

Maintenance organizations, charged with preserving the built environment, are receiving a shrinking portion of an organization’s operational budget to do its job. It has been demonstrated through various studies that efficiencies can be gained by implementing a maintenance management information system (MMIS). However, with so many choices available, maintenance organizations often select the wrong system. This research effort used value-focused thinking decision analysis to create a model based on values from the Air Force Civil Engineer career field. Data for values and weights were collected from official documents and interviews. The resulting model is highly flexible, allowing the ultimate decision-maker …

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