Publications

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The Systems Analysis & Decision Support group (2150) at Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) led a study from 2015 to 2017 to investigate the utility of various options to achieve systematic and comprehensive incorporation of the human component of a system throughout the product lifecycle. Although technology readiness levels (TRL) are widely used in the systems engineering process to address technical maturity throughout design and development, a comparable technique to estimate the readiness of a technology for human operator use is lacking at SNL. The present study was designed to investigate the utility of a human readiness levels (HRL) scale to complement the TRL scale for the types of nuclear deterrence work conducted at SNL. The study team conducted 24 interviews with 26 individuals to (1) understand the extent to which current baseline design and development approaches at SNL incorporate the human dimension and (2) estimate the utility of various options to fully incorporate the human element in SNL work. Results confirmed that current processes do not manage the human component of a system systematically or comprehensively across programs. Although multiple options were seen to have some utility to address this shortcoming, an approach combining human readiness assessments within the existing TRL scale was perceived as relatively more useful for SNL. The study team created a proposed path forward to progress from the current ad hoc, reactive approach to a systematic, comprehensive, and rigorous approach characterized by full consideration of the human component of a system within and across programs and throughout the entire product lifecycle.

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Since 2010, the concept of human readiness levels has been under development as a possible supplement to the existing technology readiness level (TRL) scale. The intent is to provide a mechanism to address safety and performance risks associated with the human component in a system that parallels the TRL structure already familiar to the systems engineering community. Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico, initiated a study in 2015 to evaluate options to incorporate human readiness planning for Sandia processes and products. The study team has collected the majority of baseline assessment data and has conducted interviews to understand staff perceptions of four different options for human readiness planning. Preliminary results suggest that all four options may have a vital role, depending on the type of work performed and the phase of product development. Upon completion of data collection, the utility of identified solutions will be assessed in one or more test cases.

In August 2017, Sandia convened five workshops to explore the future of advanced technologies and global peace and security through the lenses of deterrence, information, innovation, nonproliferation, and population and Earth systems.

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Red teaming, as it has been traditionally practiced, cannot adequately support assessment of the kinds of system of systems that IOT and related technologies will deliver. Ways must be found to transfer responsibility for system assessment from humans to the systems themselves. This will require an intentional, fundamental reframing of how the system assessment R&D community approaches its work.

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For telemedicine to realize the vision of anywhere, anytime access to care, the question of how to create a fully interoperable technical infrastructure must be addressed. After briefly discussing how 'technical interoperability' compares with other types of interoperability being addressed in the telemedicine community today, this paper describes reasons for pursuing technical interoperability, presents a proposed framework for realizing technical interoperability, identifies key issues that will need to be addressed if technical interoperability is to be achieved, and suggests a course of action that the telemedicine community might follow to accomplish this goal.

The Advanced Concepts Group (ACG) at Sandia National Laboratories is exploring the use of Red Teaming to help intelligence analysts with two key processes: determining what a piece or pieces of information might imply and deciding what other pieces of information need to be found to support or refute hypotheses about what actions a suspected terrorist organization might be pursuing. In support of this effort, the ACG hosted a terrorism red gaming event in Albuquerque on July 22-24, 2003. The game involved two 'red teams' playing the roles of two terrorist cells - one focused on implementing an RDD attack on the DC subway system and one focused on a bio attack against the same target - and two 'black teams' playing the role of the intelligence collection system and of intelligence analysts trying to decide what plans the red teams might be pursuing. This exercise successfully engaged human experts to seed a proposed compute engine with detailed operational plans for hypothetical terrorist scenarios.

This report provides a preliminary functional description of a novel software application, the Source Code Assurance Tool, which would assist a system analyst in the software assessment process. An overview is given of the tool's functionality and design; and how the analyst would use it to assess a body of source code. This work was done as part of a Laboratory Directed Research and Development project.