Systems Engineering Commons^™

A Comparative Study Of Electronic And Paper Ballot Systems In Modern U.S. Elections, Gianna M. Wadowski

Open Access Master's Theses

In-person voting processes that rely on paper ballots have long dominated voting in the U.S. However, following the implementation of the Help America Vote Act in 2002, states rapidly adopted new voting technologies that dramatically changed the in-person voting experience. Since then, states have continued to adopt new voting technologies as new challenges and opportunities have emerged. Although scholarship has demonstrated that new voting technologies can offer benefits, reported improvements to the in-person voting experience are inconsistent. Despite changes in voting equipment and voting methods, voters continue to wait in long lines, affecting turnout and voter confidence. Using observational time …

Performing Requirements Specification And Analysis Through Open Generative Pre-Trained Transformers, Harvey J. Hurst

Theses and Dissertations

Every acquisition program begins with a requirement, and for those programs to succeed, robust requirements engineering (RE) must be implemented. RE encompasses eliciting, analyzing, specifying, and validating requirements—a critical process throughout a program's lifecycle. Despite its importance, RE faces challenges such as scope creep, ambiguity, redundancy, and inadequate automation support, often exacerbated by reliance on historical data. To address these issues, this thesis leverages advancements in Generative Technology, particularly large language models (LLMs) such as Generative Pre-Trained Transformers (GPTs). This research developed two GPT-based tools: the Single Requirement Analysis Tool and the Set of Requirements Analysis Tool. These tools were …

Designing An Interactive Application To Prevent Runway Incursion: A Systems Engineering Approach, Yixuan Cheng, Dahai Liu, Dennis Vincenzi, Donald S. Metscher

Journal of Aviation Technology and Engineering

Runway incursion is a leading cause of serious incidents and accidents at airports. A common cause of runway incursions is unfamiliarity with the airport layout. To address this, we designed an electronically interactive application intended as a practice tool for pilots during flight preparation. The aim of this application is to improve pilots’ familiarity with airports, ultimately helping to reduce runway incursions, with the goals of being interactive, affordable, easily accessible, and designed for use on mobile devices. We applied a systems engineering approach that adheres to human factors engineering principles to ensure user-friendly design and optimization of the interaction …

Integrating Data Management Plans Into The Unified Architecture Framework Standards Views, Cansu Yalim, Holly A. H. Handley

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

System Architecting translates an operational concept into a model of the system to be realized. There is a need for a Data Management Plan (DMP) to be included in the overall system engineering process with the advent of Digital Engineering. Data longevity, accessibility, and integrity can all be improved throughout the system's lifecycle by a well-defined DMP. System engineers use an architecture framework to arrange the system data into several sets of viewpoints. Incorporating a DMP at this point specifies the procedures for gathering, storing, retrieving, and maintaining data to ensure that all interested parties have access to current, correct …

Leveraging Transformer-Based Ocr Model With Generative Data Augmentation For Engineering Document Recognition, Wael Khallouli, Mohammad Shahab Uddin, Andres Sousa-Poza, Jiang Li, Samuel Kovacic

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

The long-standing practice of document-based engineering has resulted in the accumulation of a large number of engineering documents across various industries. Engineering documents, such as 2D drawings, continue to play a significant role in exchanging information and sharing knowledge across multiple engineering processes. However, these documents are often stored in non-digitized formats, such as paper and portable document format (PDF) files, making automation difficult. As digital engineering transforms processes in many industries, digitizing engineering documents presents a crucial challenge that requires advanced methods. This research addresses the problem of automatically extracting textual content from non-digitized legacy engineering documents. We introduced …

A Systems Theory-Based Framework For Uncertainty In Complex System Governance, Teresa Anne Crater

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Complex systems are all around. A complex system is a system whose collective behavior is more than the behavior exhibited by the individual parts. Such a system is characterized by an exponential increase in information, complexity, ambiguity, emergence, and high levels of uncertainty (Jaradat, 2015). Uncertainty is intrinsic to complex systems. Uncertainty refers to epistemic situations involving imperfect or unknown information. Uncertainty can refer to the chance of certain anticipated outcomes occurring, or it can refer to the unknown events that are not foreseeable as to when or if one might occur. It applies to predictions of future events, to …

Development Of A Conceptual Framework For Complex System Governance (Csg) Performance Measurement, James Hartwell Rutherford

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Within the Complex System Governance (CSG) paradigm, system performance is regulated by nine metasystem governance functions, which provide control, communication, coordination, and integration. However, CSG has lacked a fully developed model or language to richly articulate system performance at a conceptual level. The purpose of this research was to develop a systems theory-based conceptual framework to measure the performance of CSG metasystem governance using an inductive research design.

Although ‘good performance’ may seem like an obvious idea, the current literature on performance measurement across many disciplines and contexts contains vastly inconsistent uses of the word ‘performance.’ Both researchers and practitioners …

Sealion Cubesat Mission Architecture Using Model Based Systems Engineering With A Docs As Code Approach, Kevin Yi-Tzu Chiu

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Theses & Dissertations

CubeSats are a growing population within the space industry. Every year, universities launch numerous amounts of CubeSats due to their inexpensive cost of development, launch, and deployment. However, this comes with numerous challenges. As the number of university-CubeSats grow, so too do the numbers that fail. With development teams consisting mainly of students with little to no training, proper and yet easy to use tools or methods should be implemented to help ensure mission success. Especially in the critical stages of planning before and during development, a technical approach to quickly track life cycle development of a CubeSat is needed. …

Model Based Systems Engineering With A Docs-As-Code Approach For The Sealion Cubesat Project, Kevin Chiu, Sean Marquez, Sharanabasaweshwara Asundi

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Faculty Publications

The SeaLion mission architecture team sought to create a model-based systems engineering approach to assist improving CubeSat success rates as well as for the SeaLion CubeSat project to guide an implementation for the flight software. This is important because university CubeSat teams are growing in number but often have untrained students as their core personnel. This was done using a document-as-code, or docs-as-code, approach. With this the team created tools for the systems architecture with the Mach 30 Modeling Language to create an architecture that is easy to learn and use even for newly admitted team members with little to …

Model-Based Systems Engineering For A Small-Lift Launch Facility, Walter Mcgee Taraila, Sharanabasaweshwara Asundi

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Faculty Publications

A study of model‐based systems engineering (MBSE) applied to a small‐lift launch facility is presented. The research uses Systems Modeling Language (SysML) products and functional diagrams to document the ground systems on a launch pad servicing a small class payload (0–2 tons). With the projected growth in launch cadence of small‐lift rockets in the coming decade, there is a need to design increasingly complex launch systems with greater efficiency. The potential improvements in project communication, quality, and productivity are explored by developing a model following the ISO/IEC 15288 technical process framework and the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE) Object‐Oriented …

A Dual Perspective Towards Building Resilience In Manufacturing Organizations, Steven A. Fazio

Theses and Dissertations

Modern manufacturing organizations exist in the most complex and competitive environment the world has ever known. This environment consists of demanding customers, enabling, but resource intensive Industry 4.0 technology, dynamic regulations, geopolitical perturbations, and innovative, ever-expanding global competition. Successful manufacturing organizations must excel in this environment while facing emergent disruptions generated as biproducts of complex man-made and natural systems. The research presented in this thesis provides a novel two-sided approach to the creation of resilience in the modern manufacturing organization. First, the systems engineering method is demonstrated as the qualitative framework for building literature-derived organizational resilience factors into organizational structures …

Using A Systemic Skills Model To Build An Effective 21st Century Workforce: Factors That Impact The Ability To Navigate Complex Systems, Morteza Nagahi

Theses and Dissertations

The growth of technology and the proliferation of information made modern complex systems more fragile and vulnerable. As a result, competitive advantage is no longer achieved exclusively through strategic planning but by developing an influential cadre of technical people who can efficiently manage and navigate modern complex systems. The dissertation aims to provide educators, practitioners, and organizations with a model that helps to measure individuals’ systems thinking skills, complex problem solving, personality traits, and the impacting demographic factors such as managerial and work experience, current occupation type, organizational ownership structure, and education level. The intent is to study how these …

Risks To Student Achievement In Higher Education, Angela Atwell, Bettina Mrusek, James Solti, Keith Wilson

Publications

A university system sets out to deliver educational experiences that meet set goals such as the achievement of learning outcomes for individual courses and program outcomes for degree programs. There are many factors that impact the successful achievement of student learning outcomes and there-fore successful program design and implementation. If courses are not effec-tively designed with assessments properly aligned to learning outcomes, student achievement is challenging to measure. If faculty do not consistently adhere to college and/or university policies regarding submission of assignments, student behavior and perceptions of expectations in future courses may be skewed. In addition, students may, for …

A Fuzzy Framework For The Air Force Mission Dependency Index, Devin M. Depalmer

Theses and Dissertations

AFIMSC completed an MDI modernization to support better risk-based decision-making by utilizing tactical mission-owner knowledge to quantify the relationship between facilities and the missions they enable. The resulting facility-mission risk scores leave room for improvement for better use of their intended purposes due to (1) the vulnerability of cognitive biases affecting survey responses due to the use of a traditional risk matrix (2) the lack of resolution between scores from risk ties and (3) the failure to include information from the operational and strategic organizational hierarchy level. This research addresses these concerns through the novel implementation of a fuzzy logic …

Evaluating The Impact Of Culture On Customer Satisfaction For Fms Projects, Yaquari A. Adams Ii

Theses and Dissertations

The cost, time, and quality pillars of the iron triangle in project management are often considered the most important factors for managers to consider when striving to achieve project success. However, recent literature suggests customer satisfaction and end-user benefit are the most important elements to prioritize during project development. This research analyzes the Air Force Security Assistance Center Construction Division and Foreign Military Sales (FMS) joint construction operations in relation to two Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) knowledge areas, project stakeholder management and project risk management. Project stakeholder management is addressed by identifying the relationship between cultural competency and …

Meeting Temporary Facility Energy Demand With Climate-Optimized Off-Grid Energy Systems, Jay F. Pearson, Torrey J. Wagner, Justin D. Delorit, Steven J. Schuldt

Faculty Publications

Remote and contingency operations, including military and disaster-relief activities, often require the use of temporary facilities powered by inefficient diesel generators that are expensive to operate and maintain. Site planners can reduce operating costs by increasing shelter insulation and augmenting generators with photovoltaic-battery hybrid energy systems, but they must select the optimal design configuration based on the region’s climate to meet the power demand at the lowest cost. To assist planners, this paper proposes an innovative, climate-optimized, hybrid energy system selection model capable of selecting the facility insulation type, solar array size, and battery backup system to minimize the annual …

Iot And Digitization Will Reconnect System Engineering And Science, John Blyler

Systems Science Friday Noon Seminar Series

The fully connected world is quickly becoming a reality. Architects and developers of this new world must understand both the hardware and software basics of IoT and IIoT systems as well as the proven way to deal with the complexities of the integration of sensors, processors, wireless connectivity, edge to cloud networks, data partitioning and processing, AI, machine language, digital threads and twins, and much more. Such complexity can only be handled with a systems-of-systems (SoS) engineering approach.

But while systems engineering may hold many of the solutions to IoT challenges, systems engineering must evolve from its traditional role. Some …

Framework For Improving Complex System Performance, Charles B. Keating, Polinpapilinho F. Katina, Ra'ed Jaradat, Joseph M. Bradley, Richard Hodge

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

This paper introduces a framework for improvement of complex system performance. Complex systems are besieged with conditions marked by increasing uncertainty, emergence, and ambiguity. Additionally, demands for increased productivity, resource efficiencies, and performance improvement make new approaches paramount for modern systems engineers. In response, a framework to improve complex system performance is developed. Following an introduction, the paper pursues four objectives: (1) introduction of Complex System Governance (CSG) as a foundation to describe essential system functions, (2) suggest system `pathologies' as an explanation for deep system performance issues, (3) exploration of system performance improvement as a function of `requisite variety' …

Development Of A New Instrument To Assess The Performance Of Systems Engineers, Niamat Ullah Ibne Hossain, Morteza Nagahi, Raed Jaradat, Charles Keating

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

Complex systems continue to confound the capabilities of systems engineers to deal with and navigate a new generation of problems. Thus, there is an emerging need to develop a cadre of effective systems engineers capable of efficiently addressing complex systems problems. This paper introduces a new system engineering instrument that assesses the performance of systems engineers. The instrument is based on the set of performance indicators examining six fundamental system engineering attributes. This instrument would provide a baseline to understand the current state of the systems engineering skills for a systems engineer and indicate developmental areas to enhance those skills. …

Human-Intelligence And Machine-Intelligence Decision Governance Formal Ontology, Faisal Mahmud

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Since the beginning of the human race, decision making and rational thinking played a pivotal role for mankind to either exist and succeed or fail and become extinct. Self-awareness, cognitive thinking, creativity, and emotional magnitude allowed us to advance civilization and to take further steps toward achieving previously unreachable goals. From the invention of wheels to rockets and telegraph to satellite, all technological ventures went through many upgrades and updates. Recently, increasing computer CPU power and memory capacity contributed to smarter and faster computing appliances that, in turn, have accelerated the integration into and use of artificial intelligence (AI) in …

Warrior Information Network- Tactical Human View Models & Analysis, Holly A. H. Handley, Cansu Kandemir, Elnaz Dario

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

The Human View collects and categorizes data to provide information and analyses on the human component of a system. This organization of human system data helps to understand what the impact of the technology on human performance may be. The first phase of this project completed exploratory work on different Human View techniques in the context of the Warrior Information Network - Tactical (WIN-T) system. This included creating a high-level diagram to provide a conceptual realization of a General Purpose User (GPU) interacting with the WIN-T system, creating engineering diagrams using the System Modeling Language (SysML) to render the Human …

Human System Engineering Applications From Distracted Driving Simulations, Holly A.H. Handley, Cansu Kandemir, S. Long (Ed.), E.-H. Ng (Ed.), C. Downing (Ed.)

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

Most of the studies to explore the impact of distracted driving have been descriptive in nature; i.e. the research is conducted in naturalistic settings to evaluate the performance of the driver with and without distracters. However simulation models can also be used that predict the workload for driving tasks. Using concepts from process modeling, baseline models of driving tasks can be created for different driving sequences that include the associated fine motor, visual and cognitive human resources. These models can then be used to evaluate incidents of workload overload caused by different distracters, from both the internal and external vehicle …

Applying Sustainability From A Systems Perspective:, Timothy Brophy

Master's Theses

Becoming sustainable is no longer an option. Current industry methods will not be able to support the necessary changes our growing society demands. In order to keep up with ever increasing demands industry will be aimed toward making major system changes toward a fully sustainable model. As of right now only basic sustainability actions have been put in place. Industry needs to make a strategic change toward resilient systems with an end goal of evolving into fully biomimic systems. This thesis covers a brief history of production leading to the Industrial Revolution which created a need for increased sustainability efforts. …

Reference Modelling In Support Of M&S—Foundations And Applications, Andreas Tolk, Saikou Diallo, Jose Padilla, H. Herencia-Zapana

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

Whether by design or by practice, systems engineering (SE) processes are used more and more often in Modeling and Simulation (M&S). While the two disciplines are very close, there are some differences that must be taken into account in order to successfully reuse practices from one community to another. In this paper, we introduce the M&S System Development Framework (MS-SDF) that unifies SE and M&S processes. The MS-SDF comprises the SE processes of requirements capture, conceptual modelling, and verification and validation (V&V), and extends them to M&S. We use model theory as a deductive apparatus in order to develop the …

System Governance Analysis Of Complex Systems, Behnido Y. Calida

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this research was to develop and deploy a systems-based framework for analysis of complex governance systems using a multimethodology research design. Two research gaps motivated this research: (1) lack of an integrated conceptualization of a system governance construct, (2) an absence of studies that consider both the governed and governing systems as well as the emergent interactions that arise from within complex governance systems.

The research focused on three primary questions: (1) What are the distinctive characteristics of governance?; (2) What system-based framework can be developed for analysis of governance in complex systems?, and (3) What results …

Leading Indicator Analysis For High Speed Sled Test Programs, Laurie C. Knorr

Theses and Dissertations

Leading Indicators (LI) were introduced to the Systems Engineering (SE) community in 2005. These measures are used to evaluate the effectiveness of how a specific work activity is applied on a project in a manner that provides information about impacts that are likely to affect the system performance. The LIs are designed to give a project manager/systems engineer insight into where their development project is heading and a chance to implement corrective actions early. This research strives to apply LIs to the testing community, specifically high speed sled testing, to improve the testing process and, in turn, improve the quality …

Cyber Physical Complex Networks, Modeling, Analysis, And Control, Neveen Shlayan

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This research scrutinize various attributes of complex networks; mainly, modeling, sensing, estimation, safety analysis, and control. In this study, formal languages and finite automata are used for modeling incident management processes. Safety properties are checked in order to verify the system. This method introduces a systematic approach to incident management protocols that are governed by mostly unsystematic algorithms. A portion of the used data in this study is collected by means of radar and loop detectors. A weighted t-statistics methodology is developed in order to validate these detectors. The detector data is then used to extract travel time information where …

Enterprise Requirements And Acquisition Model, David A. Leach, Chad T. Searle

Theses and Dissertations

In support of senior leadership emphasis on improving early systems engineering and analysis, the Enterprise Requirements and Acquisition Model (ERAM) is a quantitative discrete-event process simulation model that accounts for activities from the identification of a desired space capability early in the JCIDS process through Milestone C of the acquisition system resulting in a probabilistic schedule distribution for a given concept. This model of the DoD's space capability development process will provide valuable decision making information for Concept Characterization and Technical Descriptions referenced during Analysis of Alternatives. The research focused on identifying activities, assigning historical triangular distributions and probabilities at …

Nurturing Systems Thinking: Developing A Framework Based On The Human Factors Analysis And Classification System (Hfacs) To Improve Systems Development Processes, Arjun Vijayanarayanan

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

Large systems engineering projects have an astonishingly high failure rate. The reasons hypothesized for such a high failure rate include the neglect of nonsalient system elements such as social and human or organizational aspects of systems. Social and human factors have long been known to be critical elements of systems that are frequently ignored (e.g., Goguen, 1994). Systems engineering processes can benefit and be improved by effective utilization of a framework that helps developers expand their attention and efforts beyond the salient aspects of the system and the development process. In the aviation field, the Human Factors Analysis and Classification …

Application And Validation Of Concept Maturity Assessment Framework, Mathews C. Scharch, Jeremy J. Homan

Theses and Dissertations

Far too often decision makers select concepts based on insufficient data, resulting in projects that are over-budget, over-schedule, and not what the customer wants. Research efforts have proposed a stage-gated concept maturity framework as a tool to assess and increase the maturity of concepts. This research uses multiple validation techniques to demonstrate the value this framework can provide. Interviews with acquisition professionals capture qualitative and quantitative data on the utility of the elements of the framework and the acquisition process. This research also applies the framework to a current acquisition program to determine if it can be broadly applied for …