Search NASA⌕ Search

SEARCH · Search NASA

Results for “Complexity management”

Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 307 records · Page 17
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS2021

A Ground-Delay-Based Approach to Reduce Impedance-Based Airspace Complexity

This paper introduces a ground delay based traffic management approach to reduce the impedance based airspace complexity for a given scenario. The preliminary work presented here extends our prior research on developing an impedance based complexity metric for unmanned aircraft system traffic scenario classification. Impedance based metric was evaluated for 1045 randomly-generated scenarios. Scenarios with overall impedance above a certain threshold were declared as no-go. A ground delay approach was developed to be applied to the rest of the scenarios so as to remediate any scenarios with small areas of high impedance on their impedance maps. A sample application is shown for a scenario with sixty flights. The final paper will include detailed trade-offs between overall accrued system delay and the delay tolerance for each aircraft. A sample application to a potential Urban Air Mobility traffic scenario will also be included in the final paper.

Vishwanath Bulusu↗
NASA NTRS1998

Creating a GIS-Based Decision-Support System

Tilting the Balance: Climate Variability and Water Resource Management in the Southwest, a regional conference hosted by the Pan American Center for Environmental Studies, will be held at The University of Texas at El Paso on March 2-4, 1998. The conference is supported through the US Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) established by the President in 1989, and codified by Congress in the Global Change Research Act of 1990. The NASA Mission to Planet Earth program is one of the workshops sponsors. The purpose of the regional workshops is to improve understanding of the consequences of global change. This workshop will be focused on issues along the border and the Rio Grande River and thus will bring together stakeholders from Mexico, California, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado representing federal, state, and local governments; universities and laboratories; industry, agricultural and natural resource managers; and non-governmental organizations. This paper discusses the efforts of the NASA PACES center create a GIS-based decision-support system that can be used to facilitate discussion of the complex issues of resource management within the targeted international region.

Alvarado, Lori↗
DOE OSTI2024

Enabling HPC Scientific Workflows for Serverless

The convergence of edge computing, big data analytics, and AI with traditional scientific calculations is increasingly being adopted in HPC workflows. Workflow management systems are crucial for managing and orchestrating these complex computational tasks. However, it is difficult to identify patterns within the growing population of HPC workflows. Serverless has emerged as a novel computing paradigm, offering dynamic resource allocation, quick response time, fine-grained resource management and auto-scaling. In this paper, we propose a framework to enable HPC scientific workflows on serverless. Our approach integrates a widely used traditional HPC workflow generator with an HPC serverless workflow management system to create benchmark suites of scientific workflows with diverse characteristics. These workflows can be executed on different serverless platforms. We comprehensively compare executing workflows on traditional local containers and serverless computing platforms. Our results show that serverless can reduce CPU and memory usage respectively by 78.11% and 73.92% without compromising performance.

Andrei da silva, Anderson↗
NASA NTRS2005

Safety and Mission Assurance Performance Metric

The safety and mission assurance (S&MA) performance metric is a method that provides a process through which the managers of a large, complex program can readily understand and assess the accepted risk, the problems, and the associated reliability of the program. Conceived for original use in helping to assure the safety and success of the International Space Station (ISS) program, the S&MA performance metric also can be applied to other large and complex programs and projects. The S&MA-performance-metric data products comprise one or more tables (possibly also one or more graphs) that succinctly display all of the information relevant (and no information that is irrelevant) to management decisions that must be made to assure the safety and success of a program or project, thereby facilitating such decisions.

Holsomback, Jerry↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

The Impact of Delayed Communication on NASA’s Human-Systems Operations: Preliminary Results of a Systematic Review

Throughout the history of human spaceflight, NASA has relied on a team of ground-based experts on Earth to manage its missions, vehicles, and crews to ensure crew safety and mission success. However, as missions progress beyond low-Earth orbit (LEO), this paradigm of dependence on ground must evolve. Beyond LEO, in missions to the moon and Mars, crews will confront new challenges: limited evacuation options, reduced resupply capabilities, and significant communication delays that impede real-time support from experts on the ground. This reduction in ground support amplifies the likelihood that crews will be unable to adequately respond to unanticipated, safety-critical events. Understanding the scope of these risks and identifying effective countermeasures hinges on understanding the impact of communication delays on complex operations, especially in urgent, unforeseen events. Real-time communication currently provides the crew with continuous access to a large, extensively resourced ground team skilled in anomaly resolution. However, as communication delays grow, the need to transfer some responsibilities from ground experts to onboard crew becomes evident. NASA has been exploring this shift in operational responsibilities and its effectiveness in managing complex operations for decades. Nevertheless, a comprehensive understanding of the specific challenges posed by communication delays and the necessary countermeasures to mitigate them remains a gap. In this paper, we present an update on our systematic review of the literature on communication delays, the first in-depth review since 2013 (Rader et al.). We introduce a coding taxonomy to capture key constructs from papers of interest and discuss preliminary findings. These preliminary results suggest two significant research gaps: limited studies have been conducted 1) with lunar-like latencies and 2) on problem-solving strategies for the maximum latencies expected in Mars missions. We outline plans and propose recommendations to address these gaps through ongoing and future research.

human-systems integration↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

The Impact of Delayed Communications on NASA's Human-Systems Operations: Preliminary Results of a Systematic Review

Throughout the history of human spaceflight, NASA has relied on a team of ground-based experts on Earth to manage its missions, vehicles, and crews to ensure crew safety and mission success. However, as missions progress beyond low-Earth orbit (LEO), this paradigm of dependence on ground must evolve. Beyond LEO, in missions to the moon and Mars, crews will confront new challenges: limited evacuation options, reduced resupply capabilities, and significant communication delays that impede real-time support from experts on the ground. This reduction in ground support amplifies the likelihood that crews will be unable to adequately respond to unanticipated, safety-critical events. Understanding the scope of these risks and identifying effective countermeasures hinges on understanding the impact of communication delays on complex operations, especially in urgent, unforeseen events. Real-time communication currently provides the crew with continuous access to a large, extensively resourced ground team skilled in anomaly resolution. However, as communication delays grow, the need to transfer some responsibilities from ground experts to onboard crew becomes evident. NASA has been exploring this shift in operational responsibilities and its effectiveness in managing complex operations for decades. Nevertheless, a comprehensive understanding of the specific challenges posed by communication delays and the necessary countermeasures to mitigate them remains a gap. In this paper, we present an update on our systematic review of the literature on communication delays, the first in-depth review since 2013 (Rader et al.). We introduce a coding taxonomy to capture key constructs from papers of interest and discuss preliminary findings. These preliminary results suggest two significant research gaps: limited studies have been conducted 1) with lunar-like latencies and 2) on problem-solving strategies for the maximum latencies expected in Mars missions. We outline plans and propose recommendations to address these gaps through ongoing and future research.

earth-independence↗
NASA NTRS2005

Intelligent Sensors: An Integrated Systems Approach

The need for intelligent sensors as a critical component for Integrated System Health Management (ISHM) is fairly well recognized by now. Even the definition of what constitutes an intelligent sensor (or smart sensor) is well documented and stems from an intuitive desire to get the best quality measurement data that forms the basis of any complex health monitoring and/or management system. If the sensors, i.e. the elements closest to the measurand, are unreliable then the whole system works with a tremendous handicap. Hence, there has always been a desire to distribute intelligence down to the sensor level, and give it the ability to assess its own health thereby improving the confidence in the quality of the data at all times. This paper proposes the development of intelligent sensors as an integrated systems approach, i.e. one treats the sensors as a complete system with its own sensing hardware (the traditional sensor), A/D converters, processing and storage capabilities, software drivers, self-assessment algorithms, communication protocols and evolutionary methodologies that allow them to get better with time. Under a project being undertaken at the NASA Stennis Space Center, an integrated framework is being developed for the intelligent monitoring of smart elements. These smart elements can be sensors, actuators or other devices. The immediate application is the monitoring of the rocket test stands, but the technology should be generally applicable to the Intelligent Systems Health Monitoring (ISHM) vision. This paper outlines some fundamental issues in the development of intelligent sensors under the following two categories: Physical Intelligent Sensors (PIS) and Virtual Intelligent Sensors (VIS).

Mahajan, Ajay↗
DOE OSTI2024

Prediction of Distributed River Sediment Respiration Rates Using Community-Generated Data and Machine Learning

River sediment microbial respiration is a key indicator of ecosystem functioning and the biogeochemical fluxes across this critical zone link surface and subsurface waters. As such, there is tremendous interest in measuring and mapping these respiration rates. Respiration observations are expensive and labor intensive; there is limited data available to the community. An open science, collaborative initiative is collecting samples for respiration rate analysis and multi-scale metadata; this evolving data set is being used for making machine learning (ML) predictions at unsampled sites to help inform continued community engagement. However, it is a challenge to find an optimum configuration for ML models to work with this feature-rich (i.e., 100+ possible input variables) data set. Here, we present results from a two-tiered approach to managing the analysis of this complex data set: (a) a stacked ensemble of models that automatically optimizes hyperparameters and manages the training of many models and (b) feature permutation importance to detect the most important features in the models. The major elements of this workflow are modular, portable, open, and cloud-based thus making this implementation a potential template for other applications. The models developed here predict that sediment organic matter chemistry is one of the most important features for predicting sediment respiration rate. Other larger-scale, important features fall into the categories of climatic, ecological, geological, and fluvial settings. Leveraging these larger-scale features to generate data-driven estimates of river sediment respiration rates reveals spatially consistent but heterogeneous patterns across the river network of the Columbia River Basin.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2025

POWER ELECTRONICS GRID TIED SYSTEM FINAL REPORT

Across the country, electric utilities are grappling with the persistent hurdles of integrating Distributed Energy Resources (DERs). Managing these assets safely and effectively is a complex endeavor, complicated by varying ownership structures, management philosophies, and the diversity of the technologies themselves. Consequently, the industry has seen a proliferation of bespoke system designs, control strategies, and communication frameworks—forcing utilities to spend significant time and resources developing one-off integration solutions. This project addressed these integration hurdles through a scalable demonstration of intelligent devices designed to coordinate and control diverse resources in low-voltage applications. This concept minimized the need for complex integration by transforming the separate DERs into a dispatchable virtual power plant (VPP) with integrated resiliency functions (called a Node). By collaborating with a utility partner, the project focused on developing rapidly implementable use cases that bridged the gap between theoretical control and real-world deployment

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗
NASA NTRS1984

Managing geometric information with a data base management system

The strategies for managing computer based geometry are described. The computer model of geometry is the basis for communication, manipulation, and analysis of shape information. The research on integrated programs for aerospace-vehicle design (IPAD) focuses on the use of data base management system (DBMS) technology to manage engineering/manufacturing data. The objectives of IPAD is to develop a computer based engineering complex which automates the storage, management, protection, and retrieval of engineering data. In particular, this facility must manage geometry information as well as associated data. The approach taken on the IPAD project to achieve this objective is discussed. Geometry management in current systems and the approach taken in the early IPAD prototypes are examined.

Dube, R. P.↗
NASA NTRS2000

Wind Tunnel Management and Resource Optimization: A Systems Modeling Approach

Time, money, and, personnel are becoming increasingly scarce resources within government agencies due to a reduction in funding and the desire to demonstrate responsible economic efficiency. The ability of an organization to plan and schedule resources effectively can provide the necessary leverage to improve productivity, provide continuous support to all projects, and insure flexibility in a rapidly changing environment. Without adequate internal controls the organization is forced to rely on external support, waste precious resources, and risk an inefficient response to change. Management systems must be developed and applied that strive to maximize the utility of existing resources in order to achieve the goal of "faster, cheaper, better". An area of concern within NASA Langley Research Center was the scheduling, planning, and resource management of the Wind Tunnel Enterprise operations. Nine wind tunnels make up the Enterprise. Prior to this research, these wind tunnel groups did not employ a rigorous or standardized management planning system. In addition, each wind tunnel unit operated from a position of autonomy, with little coordination of clients, resources, or project control. For operating and planning purposes, each wind tunnel operating unit must balance inputs from a variety of sources. Although each unit is managed by individual Facility Operations groups, other stakeholders influence wind tunnel operations. These groups include, for example, the various researchers and clients who use the facility, the Facility System Engineering Division (FSED) tasked with wind tunnel repair and upgrade, the Langley Research Center (LaRC) Fabrication (FAB) group which fabricates repair parts and provides test model upkeep, the NASA and LARC Strategic Plans, and unscheduled use of the facilities by important clients. Expanding these influences horizontally through nine wind tunnel operations and vertically along the NASA management structure greatly increases the complexity of developing a model that can be used for successfully implementing a standardized management planning tool. The objective of this study was to implement an Integrated Wind Tunnel Planning System to improve the operations within the aeronautics testing and research group, in particular Wind Tunnel Enterprise. The study included following steps: Conducted literature search and expert discussions (NASA and Old Dominion University faculty), Performed environmental scan of NASA Langley wind tunnel operations as foundation for problem definition. Established operation requirements and evaluation methodologies. Examined windtunnel operations to map out the common characteristics, critical components, and system structure. Reviewed and evaluated various project scheduling and management systems for implementation, Evaluated and implemented "Theory of Constraints (TOC)" project scheduling methodology at NASA Langley wind tunnel operations together with NASA staff.

Jacobs, Derya, A.↗
NASA NTRS2018

Improving Aquatic Plant Management in the California Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta

Management of aquatic weeds in complex watersheds and river systems present many challenges to assessment, planning and implementation of management practices for floating and submerged aquatic invasive plants. The Delta Region Areawide Aquatic Weed Project (DRAAWP), a USDA sponsored area-wide project, is working to enhance planning, decision-making and operational efficiency in the California Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Satellite and airborne remote sensing are used map (area coverage and biomass), direct operations, and assess management impacts on plant communities. Archived satellite records going are used to review results from previous climate and management events and aide in developing long-term strategies. Modeling at local and watershed scales provides insight into land-use effects on water quality. Plant growth models informed by remote sensing are being applied spatially across the Delta to balance location and type of aquatic plant, growth response to altered environments, phenology, environmental regulations, and economics in selection of management practices. Initial utilization of remote sensing tools developed for mapping of aquatic invasive weeds improved operational efficiency by focusing limited chemical use to strategic areas with high plant-control impact and incorporating mechanical harvesting when chemical use is restricted. These assessment methods provide a comprehensive and quantitative view of aquatic invasive plants communities in the California Delta, both spatial and temporal, informed by ecological understanding with the objective of improving management and assessment effectiveness.

Aquatic↗
NASA NTRS2018

Using Remote Sensing Mapping and Growth Response to Environmental Variability to Aide Aquatic Invasive Plant Management

Management of aquatic weeds in complex watersheds and river systems present many challenges to assessment, planning and implementation of management practices for floating and submerged aquatic invasive plants. The Delta Region Areawide Aquatic Weed Project (DRAAWP), a USDA sponsored area-wide project, is working to enhance planning, decision-making and operational efficiency in the California Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Satellite and airborne remote sensing are used map (area coverage and biomass density), direct operations, and assess management impacts on plant communities. Archived satellite records enable review of results following previous climate and management events and aide in developing long-term strategies. Examples of remote sensing aiding effectiveness of aquatic weed management will be discussed as well as areas for potential technological improvement. Modeling at local and watershed scales using the SWAT modeling tool provides insight into land-use effects on water quality (described by Zhang in same Symposium). Controlled environment growth studies have been conducted to quantify the growth response of invasive aquatic plants to water quality and other environmental factors. Environmental variability occurs across a range of time scales from long-term climate and seasonal trends to short-term water flow mediated variations. Response time for invasive species response are examined at time scales of weeks, day, and hours using a combination of study duration and growth assessment techniques to assess water quality, temperature (air and water), nitrogen, phosphorus, and light effects. These provide response parameters for plant growth models in response to the variation and interact with management and economic models associated with aquatic weed management. Plant growth models are to be informed by remote sensing and applied spatially across the Delta to balance location and type of aquatic plant, growth response to altered environments and phenology. Initial utilization of remote sensing tools developed for mapping of aquatic invasive plants improved operational efficiency in management practices. These assessment methods provide a comprehensive and quantitative view of aquatic invasive plants communities in the California Delta.

Remote Sensing↗
NASA NTRS2018

Using Remote Sensing to Assess of Growth and Distribution for Floating Invasive Plants and Growth Response Times to Altered Environments

Management of aquatic weeds in complex watersheds and river systems present many challenges to assessment, planning and implementation of management practices for aquatic invasive plants. The Delta Region Areawide Aquatic Weed Project (DRAAWP), a USDA (U. S. Dept. of Agriculture)-sponsored area-wide project, is working to enhance planning, decision-making and operational efficiency of invasive plant management in the California Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Satellite and airborne remote sensing are used to map area of plant coverage and estimate biomass density to aid operations and assess management impacts on plant communities. Modeling at local and watershed scales using the SWAT (Soil Water Assessment Tool) modeling tool provides insight into land-use effects on water quality. Environmental variability in the Delta occurs across a range of time scales from long-term climate and seasonal trends to short-term water flow mediated variations. Controlled environment growth studies have been conducted to quantify the growth response of invasive aquatic plants to water quality and other environmental factors. Response time for invasive species response are examined at time scales of weeks, day, and hours using a combination of study duration and growth assessment techniques to assess water quality, temperature (air and water), and light effects. These provide response parameters for plant growth models in response to environmental variation and interact with management and economic models associated with aquatic weed management. Plant growth models are to be informed by remote sensing and applied spatially across the Delta to balance location and type of aquatic plant, growth response to altered environments and phenology. Initial utilization of remote sensing tools developed for mapping of aquatic invasive plants improved operational efficiency in management practices. These assessment methods provide a comprehensive and quantitative view of aquatic invasive plant communities in the California Delta.

Floating↗
NASA NTRS1999

BIO-Plex Information System Concept

This paper describes a suggested design for an integrated information system for the proposed BIO-Plex (Bioregenerative Planetary Life Support Systems Test Complex) at Johnson Space Center (JSC), including distributed control systems, central control, networks, database servers, personal computers and workstations, applications software, and external communications. The system will have an open commercial computing and networking, architecture. The network will provide automatic real-time transfer of information to database server computers which perform data collection and validation. This information system will support integrated, data sharing applications for everything, from system alarms to management summaries. Most existing complex process control systems have information gaps between the different real time subsystems, between these subsystems and central controller, between the central controller and system level planning and analysis application software, and between the system level applications and management overview reporting. An integrated information system is vitally necessary as the basis for the integration of planning, scheduling, modeling, monitoring, and control, which will allow improved monitoring and control based on timely, accurate and complete data. Data describing the system configuration and the real time processes can be collected, checked and reconciled, analyzed and stored in database servers that can be accessed by all applications. The required technology is available. The only opportunity to design a distributed, nonredundant, integrated system is before it is built. Retrofit is extremely difficult and costly.

Jones, Harry↗
NASA NTRS2010

MOS 2.0: The Next Generation in Mission Operations Systems

A Mission Operations System (MOS) or Ground System constitutes that portion of an overall space mission Enterprise that resides here on Earth. Over the past two decades, technological innovations in computing and software technologies have allowed an MOS to support ever more complex missions while consuming a decreasing fraction of Project development budgets. Despite (or perhaps, because of) such successes, it is routine to hear concerns about the cost of MOS development. At the same time, demand continues for Ground Systems which will plan more spacecraft activities with fewer commanding errors, provide scientists and engineers with more autonomous functionality, process and manage larger and more complex data more quickly, all while requiring fewer people to develop, deploy, operate and maintain them. One successful approach to such concerns over this period is a multimission approach, based on the reuse of portions (most often software) developed and used in previous missions. The Advanced Multi-Mission Operations System (AMMOS), developed for deep-space science missions, is one successful example of such an approach. Like many computing-intensive systems, it has grown up in a near-organic fashion from a relatively simple set of tools into a complexly interrelated set of capabilities. Such systems, like a city lacking any concept of urban planning, can and will grow in ways that are neither efficient nor particularly easy to sustain. To meet the growing demands and unyielding constraints placed on ground systems, a new approach is necessary. Under the aegis of a multi-year effort to revitalize the AMMOS's multimission operations capabilities, we are utilizing modern practices in systems architecting and model-based engineering to create the next step in Ground Systems: MOS 2.0. In this paper we outline our work (ongoing and planned) to architect and design a multimission MOS 2.0, describe our goals and measureable objectives, and discuss some of the benefits that this top-down, architectural approach holds for creating a more flexible and capable MOS for Missions while holding the line on cost.

ground systems↗
NASA NTRS2021

Distribution and Relative Abundance of Scalloped (Sphyrna lewini) and Carolina (S. gilberti) Hammerheads in the Western Atlantic Ocean

The scalloped hammerhead (Sphyrna lewini) and its cryptic congener, Carolina hammerhead (S. gilberti), are sympatrically distributed in the western North Atlantic Ocean. Because the species are indistinguishable based on external morphology, little research focused on Carolina hammerheads exists. In this study, the distribution of Carolina hammerheads in waters of the United States off the east coast (U.S. Atlantic) and Gulf of Mexico (Gulf) was examined and their abundance relative to scalloped hammerheads assessed by genetically identifying 1,232 individuals using diagnostic single nucleotide polymorphisms. Both species were found in the U.S. Atlantic, where 27% of individuals were Carolina hammerheads, but only scalloped hammerheads were identified in the Gulf. In Bulls Bay, SC, a well-known hammerhead nursery, assessment of relative abundance from May to September showed scalloped hammerheads were more abundant May-June and Carolina hammerheads more abundant July-September. Results of this study suggest Carolina hammerheads have a spatially limited distribution in the western North Atlantic and highlight the importance of Bulls Bay as a nursery for the species. In addition, the results suggest Carolina hammerheads may comprise a non-trivial proportion of what is considered the U.S. Atlantic scalloped hammerhead stock and should be considered in future decisions regarding management of the hammerhead complex.

Sympatric↗