Search NASA⌕ Search

SEARCH · Search NASA

Results for “socio-technical systems”

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 19 records
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS2010

Playing a 3-Stringed Violin: Innovation via the Joint Evolution of People, Process, and Knowledge Management System

Users continuously evaluate the value and performance of their Knowledge Management Systems (KMS). As suggested by a punctuated socio-technical system process model, today's success can quickly become tomorrow's failure should the KMS fail to meet evolving needs and expectations. The more deeply a tool is embedded in the actual work process, the more vulnerable it is to emergent changes and perturbations. This paper uses the metaphor of a "3-stringed violin" to explore how differing levels of user knowledge about tools and processes can lead to system perturbations and how the active involvement of other actors can dampen the impact of perturbations, i.e., help the system survive the operational equivalent of a broken string. Recommendations suggest ways to increase system resiliency and contribute to incremental innovation.

Socio-technical systems↗
DOE OSTI2026

Wildfire-Power Grid Interactions: Feedback, Impacts, Monitoring, Modeling, and Mitigation Strategies

Wildfires are increasingly interacting with electric power systems through a two-way hazard chain: fires damage grid assets and trigger cascading outages, while grid faults can ignite new fires under hot, dry, and windy conditions. This review synthesizes the state of knowledge across five domains: (i) physical impacts of flames, heat, and smoke on lines, towers, insulators, and substations; (ii) power-infrastructure-initiated ignitions via conductor clash, high-impedance faults, and corona discharge; (iii) widespread blackouts and disproportionate societal impacts; (iv) multi-scale monitoring spanning laboratory tests, in-situ and grid-integrated sensors, and Earth observation; (v) coupled modeling that links fire behavior with grid operations; and (vi) technological and strategic mitigation pathways spanning prevention, response, and recovery. We integrate these domains into a novel 'feedback-aware' socio-technical framework. Through a longitudinal analysis (2005-2025) of global incidents, we identify that while vegetation contact remains the most frequent ignition source, aging infrastructure failure has emerged as a critical driver of catastrophic 'mega-fires'. We further identify persistent gaps, including limited interoperability of high-frequency grid and environmental data, scarce real-time data assimilation, and under-developed equity metrics for outage management. We conclude by outlining a research agenda to (1) deploy interoperable sensing architectures, (2) advance feedback-coupled fire-grid simulations, and (3) evaluate mitigation portfolios through techno-economic and fairness lenses. Recognizing wildfire-grid interactions as coupled socio-technical systems is essential for protecting infrastructure and communities and for ensuring reliable, sustainable electricity in a changing world.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2026

A Feasibility Study on the Integration of Human Performance Data From Diverse Sources Based on the Complexity of a Proceduralized Task

Securing the safety of socio-technical systems including nuclear facilities is the upmost goal to ensure their sustainability because historical records demonstrate that the performance degradation of human operators (e.g., human errors) is one of the crucial contributors to the occurrence of unexpected events resulting in extensive casualties and financial losses. This implies that the collection of human performance data in diverse conditions with which they could be faced during the operation of nuclear facilities. As this collection requires significant resources, it is necessary to resolve how to accomplish it with limited resources. To address this challenge, as suggested in the SHEEP framework, it is indispensable to extract valuable insights after integrating various kinds of human performance data obtained from different sources. However, a practical method to soundly integrate them seems to be still incomplete. Accordingly, the applicability of TACOM (Task Complexity) measure is investigated as a tool to identify useful information based on the integration of human performance data observed from different simulation conditions. As a result, it is expected that the TACOM measure would play an important role in addressing the technical challenge in securing human performance data.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗
DOE OSTI2025

ReVise: A Human-AI Interface for Incremental Algorithmic Recourse

The recent adoption of artificial intelligence in socio-technical systems raises concerns about the black-box nature of the resulting decisions in fields such as hiring, finance, admissions, etc. If data subjects—such as job applicants, loan applicants, and students—receive an unfavorable outcome, they may be interested in algorithmic recourse, which involves updating certain features to yield a more favorable result when re-evaluated by algorithmic decision-making. Unfortunately, when individuals do not fully understand the incremental steps needed to change their circumstances, they risk following misguided paths that can lead to significant, long-term adverse consequences. Existing recourse approaches focus exclusively on the final recourse goal but neglect the possible incremental steps to reach the goal with real-life constraints, user preferences, and model artifacts. To address this gap, we formulate a visual analytic workflow for incremental recourse planning in collaboration with AI/ML experts and contribute an interactive visualization interface that helps data subjects efficiently navigate the recourse alternatives and make an informed decision. We also present one of the many usage scenarios, developed during exploratory feedback sessions with twelve graduate students using a real-world dataset, which demonstrates that our approach can be instrumental for data subjects in choosing a suitable recourse path.

algorithmic recourse↗
NASA NTRS2003

Applying STAMP in Accident Analysis

Accident models play a critical role in accident investigation and analysis. Most traditional models are based on an underlying chain of events. These models, however, have serious limitations when used for complex, socio-technical systems. Previously, Leveson proposed a new accident model (STAMP) based on system theory. In STAMP, the basic concept is not an event but a constraint. This paper shows how STAMP can be applied to accident analysis using three different views or models of the accident process and proposes a notation for describing this process.

Leveson, Nancy↗
NASA NTRS2003

Agent-Supported Mission Operations Teamwork

This slide presentation reviews the development of software agents to support of mission operations teamwork. The goals of the work was to make automation by agents easy to use, supervise and direct, manage information and communication to decrease distraction, interruptions, workload and errors, reduce mission impact of off-nominal situations and increase morale and decrease turnover. The accomplishments or the project are: 1. Collaborative agents - mixed initiative and creation of instructions for mediating agent 2. Methods for prototyping, evaluating and evolving socio-technical systems 3. Technology infusion: teamwork tools in mISSIons 4. Demonstrations in simulation testbed An example of the use of agent is given, the use of an agent to monitor a N2 tank leak. An incomplete instruction to the agent is handled with mediating assistants, or Intelligent Briefing and Response Assistant (IBRA). The IBRA Engine also watches data stream for triggers and executes Act-Whenever actions. There is also a Briefing and Response Instruction (BRI) which is easy for a discipline specialist to create through a BRI editor.

Malin, Jane T.↗
DOE OSTI2026

Governing in Time: Temporal Capacity and the Feasibility of Energy Transitions

Energy systems function as both technological systems and temporal institutions that shape how societies coordinate, justify, and support collective choices over time. This paper introduces the concept of governance horizons to explain why energy transitions can remain morally supported yet become institutionally weak under increasing pressure. We argue that governability depends on institutions' capacity to synchronize across multiple timeframes - aligning short-term decisions with intermediate coordination and long-term commitments. When this synchronization fails, transitions struggle not because their goals are dismissed, but because governance lacks sufficient time to justify, coordinate, and uphold decisions. Comparative analysis of San Antonio, Texas, and Interior Alaska reveals how energy system pressures generate distinct temporal configurations: San Antonio exhibits governance horizon stretching, where institutions must simultaneously meet near-term reliability demands and long-term transformation goals, while Interior Alaska exhibits horizon compression, where extreme environmental constraints force decision-making into short stabilization cycles. In both contexts, public support for sustainability goals coexists with institutional strain because evaluative judgments are unevenly distributed over time. A temporal configuration analysis is introduced as a diagnostic analytic stance for identifying these patterns. By treating temporal alignment as an explanatory variable rather than a background condition, this approach clarifies how feasibility, sequencing, and legitimacy are shaped by constraints on institutional time. The analysis demonstrates that successful energy transitions depend not only on technological innovation or institutional support, but on governance systems’ ability to sustain credible coordination across multiple time horizons.

Comparative case study↗
NASA NTRS1981

A Design Process for the Acoustical System of an Enclosed Space Colony

Sounds of Silence. Using a general systems approach, factors and components of the acoustical design process for an isolated, confined space community in a torus space enclosure are considered. These components include the following: organizational structure and its effect on alternatives; problem definition and limits; criteria and priorities; methods of data gathering; modelling and measurement of the whole system and its components; decision methods; and design scenario of the acoustics of the complex, socio-technical space community system with emphasis on the human factors.

Hawke, Joanne↗
NASA NTRS2003

Two Paths from the Same Place: Task Driven and Human Centered Evolution of a Group Information Surface

This is the tale of two different implementations of a collaborative information tool, that started from the same design source. The Blueboard, developed at IBM Research, is a tool for groups to use in exchanging information in a lightweight, informal collaborative way. It began as a large display surface for walk-by use in a corporate setting and has evolved in response to task demands and user needs. At NASA, the MERBoard is being designed to support surface operations for the upcoming Mars Exploration Rover Missions. The MERBoard is a tool that was inspired by the Blueboard design, extending this design to support the collaboration requirements for viewing, annotating, linking and distributing information for the science and engineering teams that will operate two rovers on the surface of Mars. The ways in which each group transformed the system reflects not only technical requirements, but also the needs of users in each setting and embedding of the system within the larger socio-technical environment. Lessons about how task requirements, information flow requirements and work practice drive the evolution of a system are illustrated.

Russell, Daniel M.↗
DOE OSTI2025

Modeling Cyber Supply Chain Incidents with Multilayered Graph Motifs

As noted within the literature, supply chain includes people and organizations---manufacturers, integrators, and third-party vendors---that are involved in one or more stages of a product lifecycle. Since supply chains, by definition, include organizations and people, supply chain risk management activities must consider dependencies between an organization's business processes and third-party resources. Just as adversarial tactics can be implemented via techniques implemented via networked computer systems, so can such tactics be expressed via legal business relationships. A cyber incident may have an exponential impact downstream, for example, by leveraging a product's distribution channel (e.g. malicious updates in SolarWinds, buggy updates in CrowdStrike). Similarly, legitimate and legal business relationships also affect the attack surface exposure of systems, enabling long-term persistence and/or unknown impacts to product quality that are hard to detect. This paper catalogs several recent digital supply chain incidents and applies a multilayered network formalism to develop structural indicators (graph motifs) that reflect potentially-adversarial behavior. Finally, we compare and contrast the characteristics of adversarial tactics (e.g. Loss of Availability, Data Collection) that leverage cyber-physical dependencies to those that leverage legal organizational relationships.

97 - MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
NASA NTRS1985

Socio-technical integration of the workplace

The objective of socio-technical theory and design is to provide the best match between the social system and the technical system. The achievement of a best match makes optimal use of the resources of both systems. Implementation of this theory is best served when there is involvement by the user organization. The involvement relative to the introduction of new technology in the organization is extremely significant. Employee involvement is critical to effective participative management. The trends toward participative management and employee involvement have taken various forms. These have included quality circles, semi-autonomous teams and adhoc action teams. It is noteworthy to point out, as these processes have evolved, the role of a facilitator has become more prevalent. The facilitation of the socio-technical design system in industrial engineering is described.

Carter, G. L.↗
DOE OSTI2025

DIMPLES: Distributed Influence Maximization for Pandemic pLanning on Exascale Systems

We study exascale parallel algorithms for the selection of intervention or monitoring strategies in massive realistic socio-technical networks through scalable Influence Maximization (InfMax) algorithms. We employ novel techniques to enable efficient scaling on up to 8k nodes of OLCF Frontier, with 65k AMD GPUs and 458k AMD CPU cores. Current state-of-the-art InfMax tools are limited to networks with only a few million actors (vertices) and a few hundred million interactions (edges). By overcoming these limitations, we show that our approach is capable of processing a realistic social contact network of the United States with 285 million nodes and about 8 billion edges. This two orders-of-magnitude improvement over the previous state-of-the-art is obtained by leveraging algorithmic advancements for the InfMax problem and designing several problem-specific approaches to overlap communication with computation, improve GPU efficiency, and lower the application’s memory requirements. We evaluate strong scaling for computing 10k most influential seeds using up to 8k nodes of an exascale system, and weak scaling from 128 to 8k system nodes for seed sets ranging from 625 to 40k seeds. We achieve the fastest-known runtime of 25 minutes while performing 48 million diffusion simulations totaling 2.31 petabytes to identify 40k influential seeds using 8k nodes, and take 5.75 minutes to identify 10k seeds while using 4k nodes.

Minutoli, Marco [Pacific Northwest National Labora↗
DOE OSTI2025

A Data Processing Pipeline To Extract A Knowledge Graph From Heterogeneous Data For Socio-technical Analysis Of Critical Infrastructure Influence

The code is written in Python and consists of the following pipeline that is implemented in Apache Airflow. This pipeline intends to understand the companies that are directly or indirectly involved with a type of critical infrastructure system at some point in that system's lifecycle. The pipeline takes a configuration file that specifies a list of initial companies to consider, a geographic region of interest, and a set of SEC form types as well as other data sources (e.g. CrunchBase) from which to extract entities and relations. There are four main components to this pipeline as currently implemented: Entity Extraction, Network Construction, Analysis, and Visualization. First, Entity Extraction, is implemented as the `topear-extract_organizations` Apache Airflow workflow. Given an initial query that specifies a geographic region of interest and a time interval, the software will extract CI facilities of interest and organizations that have a direct influence relationship to those facilities (e.g. ownership). During the course of the LDRD, we focused on Electric Vehicle charging stations and this information is available via the Department of Energy (DOE) database on fueling stations maintained by NREL. Within the context of the DOE CESER project, we have focused on Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS). Second, the Network Extraction component will iteratively construct a social network graph given the set of organizations and people extracted in the previous step. Organizations (and eventually People if desired) are then fed as a query to the `topgear-construct_social_network` Apache Airflow workflow which given a set of initial companies and data sets (e.g. SEC EDGAR form types, OpenCorporates, Crunchbase). This Airflow workflow will iteratively query such data sources to discover relationships with new organizations and people. For example, this module can iteratively query SEC EDGAR for metadata that documents the number of each type of form for the given set of companies and their location. This forms metadata represents a catalog of data sources from SEC EDGAR for the extracted social network knowledge graph. The pipeline then downloads these forms from the website and saves them in a build directory for further processing. These documents are then parsed for entities and relations. Again, we note that in additional to SEC data sources, this step can also pull in information on organizations via API services such as CrunchBase and OpenCorporates or bulk data sources. At the end of this step, the resultant social network, the Critical Infrastructure network, and the edges that encode relationships between organizations and CI facilities, form the Adversarial Socio-Technical Network (ASTN) that informs the analysis. Third, the Analysis component processes these generated ASTN. Previously, that has included the ability to compare prevalence of different vendors for a given infrastructure component type across different regions as well as identify common public and private investors across those vendors. This was demonstrated for EV Charging Stations across several different metropolitan areas within an IEEE PES GridEdge publication. More recently, we have looked at ways to identify infrastructure owners and operators of BESS with the most nameplate capacity across different states as well as other indictors of risk resulting from changes in ownership over time. Finally, the Visualization component consists of an HTML/CSS/JS framework by which users can interact geospatial, operational, and organizational relationships across a given portfolio of Critical Infrastructure facilities. The objective is to provide a library of UI/UX modules that can be repurposed for stakeholder-specific dashboards. All of the modules are related via a common event model that enables UI actions in one view to percolate across the other views.

Weaver, Gabriel [Idaho National Laboratory (INL), ↗
NASA NTRS2007

iPhone in NASA Ground Operations

A comprehensive review of the literature and historical background of NASA established a need for an easy-to-implement technological improvement to displaying procedures which is cost effective and risk reducing. Previous unsuccessful attempts have led this team to explore the practicality of using a mobile handheld device. The major products, inputs, resources, constraints, planning and effort required for consideration of this type of solution were outlined. After analyzing the physical, environmental, life-cycle, functional, and socio-technical requirements, a Functional Analysis was performed to describe the top-level, second-level, and third-level functions of the system requirements. In addition, the risk/value proposition of conversion to a new technology was considered and gave a blueprint for transitioning along with the tasks necessary to implement the device into the Vehicle Assembly Building's (VAB) current infrastructure. A Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) described the elemental work items of the implementation. Once the viability of this system was confirmed, a device was selected through use of technical design comparison methods including the Pugh Matrix and House of Quality. Comparison and evaluation of the Apple iPhone, Motorola Q, Blackberry, PC Notebook, and PDA revealed that the iPhone is the most suitable device for this task. This paper outlines the device design/ architecture, as well as some of the required infrastructure.

Benedict, Ashley↗
NASA NTRS1981

A Fresnel collector process heat experiment at Capitol Concrete Products

An experiment is planned, conducted and evaluated to determine the feasibility of using a Power Kinetics' Fresnel concentrator to provide process heat in an industrial environment. The plant provides process steam at 50 to 60 psig to two autoclaves for curing masonry blocks. When steam is not required, the plant preheats hot water for later use. A second system is installed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory parabolic dish test site for hardware validation and experiment control. Experiment design allows for the extrapolation of results to varying demands for steam and hot water, and includes a consideration of some socio-technical factors such as the impact on production scheduling of diurnal variations in energy availability.

Hauger, J. S.↗
DOE OSTI2025

Evaluating Direct and Indirect Influence on EV Charging Stations Across the US

The adoption of new technology for electric vehicles (EV) and mobility applications can bring underappreciated vulnerabilities to the power grid. One area of potential fraud and adversarial influence is through the business ecosystem of startups that own and deploy EV technology. Yet, there are no models or analyses that map the network of organizations and people that have direct and indirect influence over technologies currently deployed in the grid. To fill this gap, we develop a multilayer network model to measure direct and indirect influence on EV charging stations. First, we create and adversarial socio-technical network (ASTN) model via a data fusion pipeline for different US regions of interest (ROI). Then, we develop an integrated ASTN for Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and Philadelphia. We rank EV charging companies direct influence within each geographic region as well as indirect influence via social network analysis. While some companies have strong direct and indirect influence (i.e., ChargePoint) others show a mismatch between their influence over charging stations and their position within the social network. For example, Tesla has strong direct influence on stations and weak indirect influence over competitors. In contrast, 7Charge has weak direct influence over stations, but strong indirect influence over competitors.

29 - ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2025

Report of the 2025 Workshop on Next-Generation Ecosystems for Scientific Computing: Harnessing Community, Software, and AI for Cross-Disciplinary Team Science

This report summarizes insights from the 2025 Workshop on Next-Generation Ecosystems for Scientific Computing: Harnessing Community, Software, and AI for Cross-Disciplinary Team Science, which convened more than 40 experts from national laboratories, academia, industry, and community organizations to chart a path toward more powerful, sustainable, and collaborative scientific software ecosystems. To address urgent challenges at the intersection of high-performance computing (HPC), AI, and scientific software, participants envisioned agile, robust ecosystems built through socio-technical co-design—the intentional integration of social and technical components as interdependent parts of a unified strategy. This approach combines advances in AI, HPC, and software with new models for cross-disciplinary collaboration, training, and workforce development. Key recommendations include building modular, trustworthy AI-enabled scientific software systems; enabling scientific teams to integrate AI systems into their workflows while preserving human creativity, trust, and scientific rigor; and creating innovative training pipelines that keep pace with rapid technological change. Pilot projects were identified as near-term catalysts, with initial priorities focused on hybrid AI/HPC infrastructure, cross-disciplinary collaboration and pedagogy, responsible AI guidelines, and prototyping of public-private partnerships. This report presents a vision of next-generation ecosystems for scientific computing where AI, software, hardware, and human expertise are interwoven to drive discovery, expand access, strengthen the workforce, and accelerate scientific progress.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗