Engineering Papers⌕ Search

SEARCH · Engineering Papers

Results for “Risk informed approach”

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 739 records · Page 41
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2021

Regional Relative Risk, a Physics-Based Metric for Characterizing Airborne Infectious Disease Transmission

Airborne infectious disease transmission events occur over a wide range of spatial scales and can be an important means of disease transmission. Physics- and biology-based models can assist in predicting airborne transmission events, overall disease incidence, and disease control strategy efficacy. We describe a new theory that extends current approaches for the case in which an individual is infected by a single airborne particle, including the scenario in which numerous infectious particles are present in the air but only one causes infection. A single infectious particle can contain more than one pathogenic microorganism and be physically larger than the pathogen itself. This approach allows robust relative risk estimates even when there is wide variation in (i) individual exposures and (ii) the individual response to that exposure (the pathogen dose-response function can take any mathematical form and vary by individual). Based on this theory, we propose the regional relative risk—a new metric, distinct from the traditional relative risk metric, that compares the risk between two regions. In theory, these regions can range from individual rooms to large geographic areas. In this paper, we apply the regional relative risk metric to outdoor disease transmission events over spatial scales ranging from 50 m to 20 km, demonstrating that in many common cases minimal input information is required to use the metric. Also, we demonstrate that the model predictions are consistent with data from prior outbreaks. Future efforts could apply and validate this theory for other spatial scales, such as transmission within indoor environments. This work provides context for (i) the initial stages of an airborne disease outbreak and (ii) larger-scale disease spread, including unexpected low-probability disease “sparks” that potentially affect remote populations, a key practical issue in controlling airborne disease outbreaks.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2021

Next Generation Logistics Systems for Delivering Optimal Biomass Feedstocks to Biorefining Industries in the Southeastern U.S.

The diverse portfolio of biomass sources that is available in the Southeastern U.S., including a significant supply of pine “residue”, represents a valuable strategic position for the region. Through blends formulated based on critical properties, this project will take full advantage of the range in biomass properties afforded by the portfolio to produce a consistent, high-performance feedstock for the industry, while lowering cost. Key developments being targeted to enable this potential include whole-tree transport to a state-of-the-art merchandising depot that will further access biomass from ongoing, forest industry operations. The approach will more effectively utilize the tree and distribute cost, while minimizing in-woods contamination of the woody biomass component. To implement this vision, information on the chemical composition and changes that are induced during multiple preprocessing steps (size reduction, moisture removal, densification, etc.) is needed. New NIR sensor technology will be developed for online monitoring of important biomass properties. The data will be incorporated into a statistical process control platform to improve process efficiency and meet required specifications. Advanced process models are being developed to inform the techno-economic and life-cycle assessment of the program’s impact. The new system will ultimately reduce operational risks from supply chain disruptions, and allow operation of larger-scale biorefineries.

09 BIOMASS FUELS↗
DOE OSTI2025

Impacts of PV Module Connector Failures on Cost and Performance of Utility Scale Photovoltaic Systems

The reliability, cost and performance of electrical connectors are a concern in all types of electrical systems, and demands on connectors used on photovoltaic (PV) systems include that connectors maintain electrical conductivity and physical strength, endure ultraviolet sunlight and high ambient temperature, and resist moisture and chemical intrusion over a very long (>25 year) performance period. Connector failures increase operation and maintenance (O&M) costs and reduce plant production, but connector failure can also cause safety and liability problems, which are of greater concern. This work results from a three-year collaboration between Sandia National Laboratories (SNL), the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Solar Energy Technology Office (SETO) under Agreements #39035 and #38531 "Connector Reliability Across the US Solar Sector." a multi-pronged investigation of PV connector health across the US (see https://energy.sandia.gov/pvconnectors/). This report presents derivation of a Techno-Economic Analysis (TEA) that models failure modes and frequencies (how often failure occurs), estimates O&M costs and lost production associated with connector failures, and then calculates the effect that PV module connectors can have on Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE). The model is informed with initial data from quantitative assessment of failure rates, root causes and mechanisms, in-situ diagnostics and data collection, lab-based forensics, and interviews with PV connector manufacturers and plant operators. SNL conducted site inspections at multiple utility-scale sites in different climates and subjected field samples of new, used, and degraded connectors to visual and electrical characterization. EPRI conducted metallurgical analysis of the pin and sleeve conductors to study failure-induced morphological and compositional changes. There is in general a shortage of statistically valid data, but data from PVROM database maintained by SNL was sufficient to ascertain failure rates and lost production as well as provide qualitative insight in its curated maintenance records. This report details the structure of the mathematical model but the sources of data to inform the model will continue to evolve. Analysis of a 100 MW PV plant is provided as an example of the use of the model, with results indicating that connectors are responsible for Annualized O&M Costs of $\$$71,933/year; Annualized Unit O&M Costs of $\$$0.72/kW/year; that a Reserve Account of $\$$187,220 should be available to fund repairs related to connectors; that connectors add $\$$1,494,004 to the Net Present Value of the O&M Costs (project life); and that O&M related to connectors adds about $\$$0.00088/kWh to the Levelized Cost of Energy. The impact of this model is to provide a tool to make the US solar sector more robust by quantifying and monetizing the reliability risks to utility-scale PV systems posed by poorly installed, mismatched and/or poorly designed and manufactured connectors. The TEA provides a model incorporating failure statistics, O&M cost data, and lost production into a single figure of merit, informing decisions and enabling practitioners to optimize cost and performance trade-offs. Stakeholders include connector manufacturers, system designers and equipment specifiers, standards bodies, installers and O&M providers, investors and insurance underwriters. This report supports continued growth of PV predicated on assurances that properly installed and maintained PV system connectors are safe and reliable. The project team is proposing future work including accelerated testing of connectors and expanding the approach taken here to other PV system components, such as TEA for rapid shut-down devices.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
NASA NTRS2003

Moving NASA Remote Sensing Data to the GIS Environment for Health Studies

There has been an increasing demand by the health community for improved data on many different environmental factors relevant to the links between the environment and disease occurrence and transmission. These data are important for GIS-based monitoring, risk mapping, and surveillance of epidemiological parameters on a large number of different spatial, temporal, and spectral resolutions. Accordingly, NASA is developing new approaches to data collection and distribution in order to improve access to multiple sources of data streams to increase spatial and temporal coverage. Methods are being developed to incorporate different, scalable capabilities to handle multiple data sources by adding, deleting and replacing components as required as well as associated tools for their management. An approach has been to search for innovative solutions focused on the creation, use and manipulation of data stored in many different archives. These include data transformation and combination as well as data and information tools that can assist the public health and science community to use existing and anticipated products in new and flexible ways. This presentation will provide an inventory of geophysical parameters derived from satellite remote sensing sensors that are useful for GIS-based public health studies. The presentation will also discuss the physical and scientific limitations of access to and use of these data for health applications such as resolution and format differences, lack of software interoperability, data access problems. Finally, there will be a summary of the recent steps the NASA program has taken to bring NASA-generated satellite products to a wider range of users in the GIS community.

Vicente, Gilberto A.↗
DOE OSTI2026

Development and Validation of the Near-Miss Safety Score (NMSS) Framework for Heavy-Duty Vehicle Safety Assessment

Heavy-duty commercial vehicles present unique safety challenges due to their size, articulation dynamics, and operational complexity. As Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) and Automated Driving Systems (ADS) become more common in Class 8 tractor-trailers, traditional crash-based metrics are no longer sufficient to evaluate safety performance. This study introduces the Near-Miss Safety Score (NMSS)—a quantitative, physics-informed framework developed as a leading indicator of safety for advanced commercial vehicle technologies. NMSS quantifies how close a vehicle or operator comes to a collision or safety-critical event by integrating vehicle kinematics (relative distance, velocity, and acceleration) with driver or system response latency and time-to-collision. A modifier function adjusts the base score for vehicle-specific and environmental factors such as trailer articulation, load distribution, braking condition, and roadway environment. The framework enables systematic evaluation of ADAS/ADS performance under a range of operational and degraded conditions. By capturing near-miss dynamics rather than relying on crash data, NMSS provides a proactive approach to risk assessment, accelerates technology validation, and enhances interpretability for regulators and fleet operators. The proposed NMSS was validated using data collected from a motorcoach platform, demonstrating the framework’s applicability to heavy-duty safety evaluation and performance benchmarking. Results and key insights are presented in this paper.

Siekmann, Adam [ORNL] (ORCID:0000000284653935)↗
NASA NTRS1993

Intervention strategies for the management of human error

This report examines the management of human error in the cockpit. The principles probably apply as well to other applications in the aviation realm (e.g. air traffic control, dispatch, weather, etc.) as well as other high-risk systems outside of aviation (e.g. shipping, high-technology medical procedures, military operations, nuclear power production). Management of human error is distinguished from error prevention. It is a more encompassing term, which includes not only the prevention of error, but also a means of disallowing an error, once made, from adversely affecting system output. Such techniques include: traditional human factors engineering, improvement of feedback and feedforward of information from system to crew, 'error-evident' displays which make erroneous input more obvious to the crew, trapping of errors within a system, goal-sharing between humans and machines (also called 'intent-driven' systems), paperwork management, and behaviorally based approaches, including procedures, standardization, checklist design, training, cockpit resource management, etc. Fifteen guidelines for the design and implementation of intervention strategies are included.

Wiener, Earl L.↗
NASA NTRS2008

Ares-I-X Stability and Control Flight Test: Analysis and Plans

The flight test of the Ares I-X vehicle provides a unique opportunity to reduce risk of the design of the Ares I vehicle and test out design, math modeling, and analysis methods. One of the key features of the Ares I design is the significant static aerodynamic instability coupled with the relatively flexible vehicle - potentially resulting in a challenging controls problem to provide adequate flight path performance while also providing adequate structural mode damping and preventing adverse control coupling to the flexible structural modes. Another challenge is to obtain enough data from the single flight to be able to conduct analysis showing the effectiveness of the controls solutions and have data to inform design decisions for Ares I. This paper will outline the modeling approaches and control system design to conduct this flight test, and also the system identification techniques developed to extract key information such as control system performance (gain/phase margins, for example), structural dynamics responses, and aerodynamic model estimations.

Brandon, Jay M.↗
NASA NTRS2016

The Impact of New Trends in Satellite Launches on Orbital Debris Environment

The main goal of this study is to examine the impact of new trends in satellite launch activities on the orbital debris environment and collision risk. Starting from the launch of the first artificial satellite in 1957, space borne technology has become an indispensable part of our lives. More than 6,000 satellites have been launched into Earth orbit. Though the annual number of satellites launched stayed flat for many decades, the trend has recently changed. The satellite market has been undergoing a major evolution with new space companies replacing the traditional approach of deploying a few large, complex and costly satellites with an approach to use a multitude of smaller, less complex and cheaper satellites. This new approach creates a sharp increase in the number of satellites and so the historic trends are no longer representative. As a foundation for this study, a scenario for satellite deployments based on the publicly announced future satellite missions has been developed. These constellation-deploying companies include, but are not limited to, Blacksky, CICERO, EROS, Landmapper, Leosat, Northstar, O3b, OmniEarth, OneWeb, Orbcomm, OuterNet, PlanetIQ, Planet Labs, Radarsat, RapidEye Next Generation, Sentinel, Skybox, SpaceX, and Spire. Information such as the annual number of launches, the number of orbital planes to be used by the constellation, as well as apogee, perigee, inclination, spacecraft mass and area were included or approximated. Besides the production of satellites, a widespread ongoing effort to enhance orbital injection capabilities will allow delivery of more spacecraft more accurately into Earth orbits. A long list of companies such as Microcosm, Rocket Lab, Firefly Space Systems, Sierra Nevada Corporation and Arca Space Corporation are developing new launch vehicles dedicated for small satellites. There are other projects which intend to develop interstages with propulsive capabilities which will allow the deployment of satellites into their desired orbits beyond the restrictions of the launch vehicle used. These near future orbital injection technologies are also covered in the developed scenario. Using the above-mentioned background information, this study aims to examine how the orbital debris environment will be affected from the new dynamics of the emerging space markets. We developed a simulation tool that is capable of propagating the objects in a given deployment scenario with variable-sized time-steps as small as one second. Over the course of the run, the software also detects collisions; additional debris objects are then created according to the NASA breakup model and are fed back into the simulation framework. Examining the simulation results, the total number of particles to accumulate in different orbits can be monitored and the number of conjunctions can be tracked to assess the collision risks. The simulation makes it possible to follow the short- and long-term effects of a particular satellite or constellation on the space environment. Likewise, the effects of changes in the debris environment on a particular satellite or constellation can be evaluated. It is authors hope that the results of this paper and further utilization of the developed simulation tool will assist in the investigation of more accurate deorbiting metrics to replace the generic 25-year disposal guidelines, as well as to guide future launches toward more sustainable and safe orbits.

New Space↗
DOE OSTI2020

CCE Phase 3: Consequence-based Targeting

While Phase 2 was a data collection effort, Phase 3 is a targeting effort. In Phase 3, organizations systematically identify the necessary steps for adversary success - all from the adversary’s perspective. A key component to this approach is identifying the critical information needs, targets, access, and actions required for the adversary to achieve the desired effect. These Critical Needs are tied to accomplishing the HCE, such as the technical requirements for the payload (Development), or the access required to deliver a payload (Deployment).

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗
DOE OSTI2024

The need for carbon-emissions-driven climate projections in CMIP7

Abstract. Previous phases of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) have primarily focused on simulations driven by atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases (GHGs), for both idealized model experiments and climate projections of different emissions scenarios. We argue that although this approach was practical to allow parallel development of Earth system model simulations and detailed socioeconomic futures, carbon cycle uncertainty as represented by diverse, process-resolving Earth system models (ESMs) is not manifested in the scenario outcomes, thus omitting a dominant source of uncertainty in meeting the Paris Agreement. Mitigation policy is defined in terms of human activity (including emissions), with strategies varying in their timing of net-zero emissions, the balance of mitigation effort between short-lived and long-lived climate forcers, their reliance on land use strategy, and the extent and timing of carbon removals. To explore the response to these drivers, ESMs need to explicitly represent complete cycles of major GHGs, including natural processes and anthropogenic influences. Carbon removal and sequestration strategies, which rely on proposed human management of natural systems, are currently calculated in integrated assessment models (IAMs) during scenario development with only the net carbon emissions passed to the ESM. However, proper accounting of the coupled system impacts of and feedback on such interventions requires explicit process representation in ESMs to build self-consistent physical representations of their potential effectiveness and risks under climate change. We propose that CMIP7 efforts prioritize simulations driven by CO2 emissions from fossil fuel use and projected deployment of carbon dioxide removal technologies, as well as land use and management, using the process resolution allowed by state-of-the-art ESMs to resolve carbon–climate feedbacks. Post-CMIP7 ambitions should aim to incorporate modeling of non-CO2 GHGs (in particular, sources and sinks of methane and nitrous oxide) and process-based representation of carbon removal options. These developments will allow three primary benefits: (1) resources to be allocated to policy-relevant climate projections and better real-time information related to the detectability and verification of emissions reductions and their relationship to expected near-term climate impacts, (2) scenario modeling of the range of possible future climate states including Earth system processes and feedbacks that are increasingly well-represented in ESMs, and (3) optimal utilization of the strengths of ESMs in the wider context of climate modeling infrastructure (which includes simple climate models, machine learning approaches and kilometer-scale climate models).

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Exploration Capabilities Data Analysis: An Integrated Approach

In preparation for humanity’s return to the Moon, it is necessary to advance technologies and capabilities that will allow for human sustainability on the lunar surface, as well as on eventual missions to send humans to Mars. Guided by Space Policy Directive-1 and through the National Aeronautical and Space Administration (NASA) Artemis program, the advancement and development of technologies on the lunar surface will be leveraged towards technologies and knowledge needed for humans to successfully and safely go to Mars and return. In order to understand the capability needs for lunar and Mars missions, the Capabilities Integration Team identifies integration approaches and overlaps between missions to develop strategies for advancing key capabilities that support those needs. Since 2013, the Capabilities Integration Team has reached out to subject matter experts, principal technologists, and system capability leadership teams throughout NASA to gather information about the critical technologies and capabilities needed in order to support the lunar and Mars exploration missions. To properly gather this data, the Capabilities Integration Team used a capability-driven approach to identify gaps between the current state of the art and the needs of proposed exploration missions, as well as activities that may close those gaps. These inputs are used to shape technology investment strategies and are incorporated in missions to the lunar and Mars surfaces. Data collected included: gap definitions and identifying information; gap closure information and metrics for success; mapping of gaps to elements of NASA's Artemis program and future exploration architecture. . The data collected, specifically from the technology gap list, has been used to support the NASA Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution processes, as well as the NASA Space Technology Mission Directorate Strategic Technology Plans. This paper discusses the integration approach used by the Capabilities Integration Team to identify current capability gaps for the Moon to Mars architecture and what capabilities exist or must be developed to support those architecture needs. In addition, this paper also details the performance, gap characterization, current capability gap closure opportunities, and risk impacts towards Artemis, and the overall Moon to Mars architecture.

Gregory Benjamin↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Reports of Resilient Performance: Investigating Operators' Descriptions of Safety-producing Behaviors in the Aviation Safety Reporting System

While many existing taxonomies and frameworks provide a common vocabulary for describing how human operators fail in the context of sociotechnical systems, at present, there is no common vocabulary to describe how humans succeed. Such a framework would facilitate systematically collecting and analyzing data on how human performance can produce safety, not just how it can reduce safety. One potentially rich source of currently available information for exploring desired performance is the reports submitted to NASA’s Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS). These de-identified, confidential, and voluntary narrative reports are submitted by pilots, controllers, ground operators, and others within aviation operations. While these reports are primarily submitted to describe safety risks, incidents, and problems, they also often describe how those risks were mitigated, and provide a window into aspects of everyday work in aviation. This paper describes an analysis of ASRS narratives to understand how operators talk about their own resilient behaviors during adverse safety conditions and events. Guided by Erik Hollnagel’s Resilience Assessment Grid framework (i.e., anticipate, monitor, respond, learn), we illustrate our approach and methodology with examples from reports. We also highlight some of the challenges and how further research is needed in developing a taxonomy of operators’ descriptions of resilient performance.

resilient behaviors↗
DOE OSTI2022

Induced seismicity red-light thresholds for enhanced geothermal prospects in the Netherlands

Prospects for geothermal energy in the Netherlands have renewed concerns around induced earthquakes. Risks from induced earthquakes are managed by traffic light protocols (TLPs), where the red-light is chosen as the stop-point before exceeding a tolerance to risk. Here, we simulate post-shut-in earthquake scenarios based on realistic information for the Netherlands. We focus on three risk metrics: aggregates like nuisance and damage impacts and also local personal risk (LPR) – a likelihood of building collapse fatality for an individual. Our results show that the severity of these risks varies spatially by orders of magnitude. Prior induced seismicity (e.g., the 2012 Huizinge event) provides a reference baseline to calibrate the Dutch earthquake risk tolerances. We find that these calibrated risk tolerances are similar to those observed in North America, suggesting an underlying sociological ‘license to operate.’ Furthermore, the use of calibrated risk tolerances results in nuisance concerns completely eclipsing the other two metrics. We compare our results to a hypothetical Groningen geothermal operation and find that our approach sets red-light thresholds approximately one magnitude unit below the ML 3.6 Huizinge event. Overall, our results provide a first-order recommendation for red-light thresholds and proactive management of Dutch enhanced geothermal induced seismicity.

15 GEOTHERMAL ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2024

Evaluating the Effectiveness of Retrieval-Augmented Large Language Models in Scientific Document Reasoning

Despite the dramatic progress in Large Language Model (LLM) development, LLMs often provide seemingly plausible but not factual information, often referred as hallucinations. Retrieval-augmented LLMs provide a non-parametric approach to solve these issues by retrieving relevant information from external data sources and augment the training process. These models helps to trace evidence from an externally provided knowledge base allowing the model predictions to be better interpreted and verified. In this work, we critically evaluate these models in their ability to perform in scientific document reasoning tasks. To this end, we tuned multiple such model variants with science-focused instructions and evaluated them on a scientific document reasoning benchmark for the usefulness of the retrieved document passages. Our findings suggest that models justify predictions in science tasks with fabricated evidence and leveraging scientific corpus as pretraining data does not alleviate the risk of evidence fabrication.

• Artificial intelligence (AI) / machine learning ↗
NASA NTRS1994

Reliability analysis in the Office of Safety, Environmental, and Mission Assurance (OSEMA)

The technical personnel in the SEMA office are working to provide the highest degree of value-added activities to their support of the NASA Langley Research Center mission. Management perceives that reliability analysis tools and an understanding of a comprehensive systems approach to reliability will be a foundation of this change process. Since the office is involved in a broad range of activities supporting space mission projects and operating activities (such as wind tunnels and facilities), it was not clear what reliability tools the office should be familiar with and how these tools could serve as a flexible knowledge base for organizational growth. Interviews and discussions with the office personnel (both technicians and engineers) revealed that job responsibilities ranged from incoming inspection to component or system analysis to safety and risk. It was apparent that a broad base in applied probability and reliability along with tools for practical application was required by the office. A series of ten class sessions with a duration of two hours each was organized and scheduled. Hand-out materials were developed and practical examples based on the type of work performed by the office personnel were included. Topics covered were: Reliability Systems - a broad system oriented approach to reliability; Probability Distributions - discrete and continuous distributions; Sampling and Confidence Intervals - random sampling and sampling plans; Data Analysis and Estimation - Model selection and parameter estimates; and Reliability Tools - block diagrams, fault trees, event trees, FMEA. In the future, this information will be used to review and assess existing equipment and processes from a reliability system perspective. An analysis of incoming materials sampling plans was also completed. This study looked at the issues associated with Mil Std 105 and changes for a zero defect acceptance sampling plan.

Kauffmann, Paul J.↗
DOE OSTI2023

Bench-Scale Testing of a High Efficiency, Ultra-Compact Process for Pre-Combustion CO 2 Capture (Final Report)

The overarching objective of this bench-scale study is to field-validate the technical feasibility of a membrane- and adsorption-enhanced water gas shift (WGS) reaction process that employs a carbon molecular sieve (CMS) membrane reactor (MR) followed by an adsorption reactor (AR) for pre-combustion CO 2 capture while demonstrating progress towards achievement of the overall performance goals of CO 2 capture with 95% CO 2 purity at a cost of electricity (COE) of 30% less than the baseline capture approaches. The main goal of this bench-scale project is to advance the proposed MR-AR transformative CO 2 capture technology to a sufficient maturity level so that our present industrial partners (M&PT and Worley) can potentially adapt the technology for further small pilot-scale testing. The project began at TRL 4, as the system prototype had already been validated in the laboratory on simulated syngas (as part of project DE-FE0026423). The project ended at TRL 5, via scaling-up of the prototype system and testing it on actual syngas at a host site (CAER at the University of Kentucky (UKy)). The project was carried-out in two different phases: In Phase I (during BP1 of the project), the team designed, constructed, and assembled the bench-scale experimental MR-AR system, prepared the membranes, adsorbents, and catalysts, tested the bench-scale unit with simulated syngas to validate functionality, and prepared a preliminary TEA of the technology. In Phase II (during BP2 of the project), the team installed the unit at the test site at the UKy site and completed all utility connections and hookups, field-tested the novel MR-AR process in the bench-scale system using real syngas, collected and analyzed experimental data, and completed a detailed TEA of the technology. A key aim of the project was to identify and address the technical and process risks and to generate information to advance the technology to the next stage of development. All project milestones and success criteria were met. Specifically, the team: (i) designed, constructed and assembled a bench scale system that handled 1 – 5 scfm syngas and tested its functionality with simulated syngas; (ii) prepared high performance CMS membrane tubes (ID: 3.5 mm, OD: 5.7 mm, 30” long) that meet the target H 2 permeance ( > 1 m 3 /(m 2 .hr.bar) or (> 370.3 GPU)) and a target H 2 /CO selectivity >80 at the relevant temperature (up to 300oC) and pressure conditions (up to 25 bar) with a <10% decline in performance over each 250 hr. testing period (iii) procured commercial sour-shift catalyst in sufficient quantity and prepared up to 10 kg of pelletized adsorbent for use at relevant conditions (250oC 2.5wt.% and target sorbent attrition rate < 0.2; (iv) installed the bench-scale unit at the test site (UKy) and tested the MR-AR technology using real syngas for over 250 hr. for both static and flow experiments; (v) updated the TEA analysis based on bench-scale data and met CO 2 capture goals of 95% CO 2 purity at a cost of electricity 30% less than baseline capture approaches. The CMS membranes, HTC adsorbents and catalysts employed all exhibited very robust and stable performance during the long-term run (over a >250 hr live syngas run). Furthermore, the proposed MR-AR IGCC system achieved a LCOE with a N 2 sale price of $\$$ 30/ton, with N 2 compression (no N 2 compression) of 101.2 $\$$/MWh (95.3 $\$$/MWh), which represents a 29.8% (33.9%) LCOE reduction in the baseline IGCC with carbon capture of 144.2 $\$$/MWh. The proposed MR-AR IGCC delivers a CO 2 capture cost of 44.8 $\$$/tonne (39.9 $\$$/tonne) vs 98.1 $\$$/tonne of the baseline capture case and a net power production of 586 MWe (623 MWe) vs 556 MWe of the baseline capture case.

01 COAL, LIGNITE, AND PEAT↗
NASA NTRS1997

Landscape characterization of peridomestic risk for Lyme disease using satellite imagery

Remotely sensed characterizations of landscape composition were evaluated for Lyme disease exposure risk on 337 residential properties in two communities of suburban Westchester County, New York. Properties were categorized as no, low, or high risk based on seasonally adjusted densities of Ixodes scapularis nymphs, determined by drag sampling during June and July 1990. Spectral indices based on Landsat Thematic Mapper data provided relative measures of vegetation structure and moisture (wetness), as well as vegetation abundance (greenness). A geographic information system (GIS) was used to spatially quantify and relate the remotely sensed landscape variables to risk category. A comparison of the two communities showed that Chappaqua, which had more high-risk properties (P < 0.001), was significantly greener and wetter than Armonk (P < 0.001). Furthermore, within Chappaqua, high-risk properties were significantly greener and wetter than lower-risk properties in this community (P < 0.01). The high-risk properties appeared to contain a greater proportion of broadleaf trees, while lower-risk properties were interpreted as having a greater proportion of nonvegetative cover and/or open lawn. The ability to distinguish these fine scale differences among communities and individual properties illustrates the efficiency of a remote sensing/GIS-based approach for identifying peridomestic risk of Lyme disease over large geographic areas.

Topography, Medical↗
NASA NTRS2011

The Space Medicine Exploration Medical Condition List

Exploration Medical Capability (ExMC) is an element of NASA s Human Research Program (HRP). ExMC's goal is to address the risk of the "Inability to Adequately Recognize or Treat an Ill or Injured Crewmember." This poster highlights the approach ExMC has taken to address this risk. The Space Medicine Exploration Medical Condition List (SMEMCL) was created to define the set of medical conditions that are most likely to occur during exploration space flight missions. The list was derived from the International Space Station Medical Checklist, the Shuttle Medical Checklist, in-flight occurrence data from the Lifetime Surveillance of Astronaut Health, and NASA subject matter experts. The list of conditions was further prioritized for eight specific design reference missions with the assistance of the ExMC Advisory Group. The purpose of the SMEMCL is to serve as an evidence-based foundation for the conditions that could affect a crewmember during flight. This information is used to ensure that the appropriate medical capabilities are available for exploration missions.

Watkins, Sharmi↗