Engineering Papers⌕ Search

SEARCH · Engineering Papers

Results for “Risk Mitigation”

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 847 records · Page 47
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS2009

Approach for Mitigating Pressure Garment Design Risks in a Mobile Lunar Surface Systems Architecture

The stated goals of the 2004 Vision for Space Exploration focus on establishing a human presence throughout the solar system beginning with the establishment of a permanent human presence on the Moon. However, the precise objectives to be accomplished on the lunar surface and the optimal system architecture to achieve those objectives have been a topic of much debate since the inception of the Constellation Program. There are two basic styles of system architectures being traded at the Programmatic level: a traditional large outpost that would focus on techniques for survival off our home planet and a greater depth of exploration within one area, or a mobile approach- akin to a series of nomadic camps- that would allow greater breadth of exploration opportunities. The traditional outpost philosophy is well within the understood pressure garment design space with respect to developing interfaces and operational life cycle models. The mobile outpost, however, combines many unknowns with respect to pressure garment performance and reliability that could dramatically affect the cost and schedule risks associated with the Constellation space suit system. This paper provides an overview of the concepts being traded for a mobile architecture from the operations and hardware implementation perspective, describes the primary risks to the Constellation pressure garment associated with each of the concepts, and summarizes the approach necessary to quantify the pressure garment design risks to enable the Constellation Program to make informed decisions when deciding on an overall lunar surface systems architecture.

Aitchison, Lindsay↗
NASA NTRS2016

Risky Business: The Science and Art of Radiation Risk Communication in the High Risk Context of Space Travel

Successfully communicating the complex risks associated with radiation exposure is a difficult undertaking; communicating those risks within the high-risk context of space travel is uniquely challenging. Since the potential risks of space radiation exposure are not expected to be realized until much later in life, it is hard to draw comparisons between other spaceflight risks such as hypoxia and microgravity-induced bone loss. Additionally, unlike other spaceflight risks, there is currently no established mechanism to mitigate the risks of incurred radiation exposure such as carcinogenesis. Despite these challenges, it is the duty of the Space Radiation Analysis Group (SRAG) at NASA's Johnson Space Center to provide astronauts with the appropriate information to effectively convey the risks associated with exposure to the space radiation environment. To this end, astronauts and their flight surgeons are provided with an annual radiation risk report documenting the astronaut's individual radiation exposures from space travel, medical, and internal radiological procedures throughout the astronaut's career. In an effort to improve this communication and education tool, this paper critically reviews the current report style and explores alternative report styles to define best methods to appropriately communicate risk to astronauts, flight surgeons, and management.

Elgart, Shona Robin↗
NASA NTRS2023

Exploring the Complexities of Drug Formulation Selection, Storage, and Shelf-Life for Exploration Spaceflight

Medications have been a part of space travel dating back as far as the Apollo missions. Currently, medical kits aboard the ISS contain medications and supplies to help crew members cope with a variety of possible medical events. NASA reported that 1,867 medical events occurred from 1981 to 1998 on space shuttle flights, STS-1 to STS-89; 498 out of the 508 crewmembers on those flights reported experiencing a medical event other than space motion sickness. In 2000, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) convened a committee of experts, Committee on Creating a Vision for Space Medicine during Travel beyond Earth Orbit, to examine the issues surrounding astronaut health and safety for long duration space missions. The primary theme of the committee’s final report is that there is not enough known about the risks to human health during long-duration missions beyond Earth’s orbit and ways to effectively mitigate those risks in an environment of deep space. In 2014, the IOM convened the Committee on Ethics Principles and Guidelines for Health Standards for Long Duration and Exploration Spaceflights and released a report emphasizing the importance of prevention, mitigation, and treatment of major risks to human health during exploration spaceflight. NASA’s Human Research Program has organized five distinct categories of spaceflight hazards summarized by the acronym “RIDGE” (Space Radiation, Isolation and Confinement, Distance from Earth, Gravity fields, and Hostile/Closed Environments) that astronauts may encounter during exploration spaceflight. From those hazards, NASA further derived 30 of the most critical human health and performance risks, including limits to medical care resulting from pharmaceutical degradation. As we prepare for more distant exploration missions to Mars and beyond, risk management planning for astronaut healthcare should include the assembly of a medication formulary that is comprehensive enough to prevent or treat anticipated medical events, remains safe and chemically stable, and retains sufficient potency to last for the duration of the mission. The present editorial will summarize the current state of knowledge regarding innovative formulary optimization strategies, pharmaceutical stability assessment techniques, and storage and packaging solutions that could enhance drug safety and efficacy for future exploration spaceflight missions.

drug degradation risk assessment↗
NASA NTRS2018

ASTERIA Operations Demonstrates the Value of Combining the Mission Assurance and Fault Protection Roles on CubeSats

On November 20, 2017, ASTERIA (Arcsecond Space Telescope Enabling Research in Astrophysics), a 6U CubeSat performing a technology demonstration of astrophysical measurements, deployed from the ISS. The technology demonstration goals to achieve precision photometry via arcsecond-level line-of-sight pointing error and highly stable focal plane temperature control were met by February 2018. Extended mission operations are ongoing, with the primary focus on observing nearby stars for transiting exoplanets. Throughout development and operations, the roles of mission assurance and fault protection have proven critical to achieving the primary technical goals and to maintaining a healthy spacecraft through multiple extended missions. Given the budget and schedule constraints typical of a CubeSat, innovative tailoring of processes has been critical to success throughout both development and operations of ASTERIA. Mission assurance plays an important role in identifying and evaluating risk and developing cost-effective mitigations. Flexibility in the fault protection design offers a variety of options for implementing risk mitigations as risks have been uncovered both in pre-delivery testing and in mission operations. This paper will discuss the approach taken on ASTERIA to implement mission assurance and fault protection and the resulting benefits to operational efficiency and success. It will briefly address the advantages of this approach during development, in which the combination of the roles provided mission assurance significant insight to system risks, which feeds back into testing methodologies and directly into fault protection design. Operations will be discussed in detail. During this phase, the roles merge to identify in-flight fault protection updates to efficiently respond to anomalies and improve the likelihood of successful technology demonstrations. The paper will also detail the tools that are used to analyse data, identify anomalies, and develop the updates to uplink to the spacecraft. Finally, the general operational approach will be discussed to highlight the usefulness of the ASTERIA processes and their applicability to future CubeSat missions.

Knapp, Mary↗
NASA NTRS2003

Human factors in mission assurance

Space projects rely completely on people for development and implementation - but project-related risk list rarely include human factors as significant sources of risk. The paper notes mitigation techniques for risks associated with the human factors - readers are encouraged to come up with as many mitigation strategies as possible, and share them with each other.

human factors mission assurance risk management↗
NASA NTRS2020

Lunar Lettuce Production During Artemis III Mission to the Moon's South Pole

The Artemis Science Plan identified that the infrastructure and resources associated during a human/robotic exploration mission can be used to conduct fundamental lunar science needed to mitigate the risks of human exploration of surface systems (i.e. Mars and the Moon). In particular, studying the response of life to the combination of fractional gravity and deep space radiation of the Moon is needed to mitigate the HEOMD risks to the crew that result from inadequate diets. Essential nutrients and vitamins available to astronauts have been shown to degrade within the stored food system during long duration missions. Other risks to exploration missions were isolation and confinement, distance from the Earth, radiation and partial gravity.

O. Monje↗
DOE OSTI2025

Combined Meteorological and Hydrologic Uncertainties Shape Projections of Future Soil Moisture in the Eastern United States

Physical hazards pose risks to many critical systems. Designing adaptive measures to mitigate these risks is challenging due to large uncertainties in modeling future hazards and the associated sectoral responses. Here, we help address this challenge in a hydrologic context by examining the combined role of meteorological forcing and hydrologic parameter uncertainties in shaping projections of future soil moisture. By encoding a simple conceptual water balance model in a differentiable programming framework, we facilitate fast runtimes and an efficient calibration, enabling an improved uncertainty analysis. We characterize uncertainty in model parameters by calibrating against different target data sets and by using several loss functions. We then convolve the resulting parameter ensemble with a set of Earth system model projections to produce a large ensemble (2,340 members) of daily soil moisture simulations. Focusing on the eastern United States, we find that most ensemble members project a drying of soils across the region, although some simulate wetter conditions throughout this century. Our ensemble shows an increase in the frequency and intensity of dry extremes while there is less agreement for wet extremes. We conduct sensitivity analyses on several soil moisture signatures to measure the relative influence of meteorological and hydrologic uncertainties across space and time. Both meteorological and hydrologic factors contribute consistently to uncertainty surrounding long-term trends, while changes to both wet and dry soil extremes are typically more sensitive to hydrologic parameter uncertainty. Our results underscore the need to account for varied sources of uncertainty when developing long-term hydrometeorological projections.

Lafferty, David C. [University of Illinois Urbana‐↗
DOE OSTI2022

Security Enhancement of Network Constraint Grid-Edge Energy Management System

Network constrained grid edge energy management system (EMS) provides economic solution for active and reactive power dispatch of distributed energy resources (DERs) at the grid edge level. Grid edge EMS ensures secure interconnection of a circuit segment to the distribution system by maintaining grid code requirements (e.g. IEEE 1547–2018). Grid edge EMS is dependent on communication to receive load measurement, which brings a risk of unobservable false data injection attacks (FDIAs). To mitigate the risk, this paper proposes a framework to enhance resilient operation of grid edge EMS by detecting the unobservable FDIAs on loads and replacing them with forecasted values. In this work, a two-step detection algorithm is proposed. In first step, conventional residual based algorithm is deployed. Autoencoder (AE) based data driven mechanism is included in second step to detect the presence of unobservable FDIAs. After ensuring the presence of FDIA, its specific location is detected by checking the maximum residue values till the predefined threshold value is reached. Detected false data injected loads are then replaced with forecasted load values following long-short term memory (LSTM) based forecast to ensure resilient performance of grid edge EMS in the presence of attacks. This proposed security enhancement framework for grid edge EMS is evaluated in IEEE 13 bus system with three integrated DERs. Numerical simulation shows the validation of the proposed framework by reducing voltage violation in real operation of grid edge EMS.

cyber attack detection↗
NASA NTRS2023

Technological and Medical Human Health and Well-Being Options in Deep Space

Zeroth order, maintenance of human health requires supportive protection from the hazards of space, including supplying breathable air, comfortable temperatures, a supportive diet/nutrition, radiation protection, and sufficient gravity to avoid the combinatorial impacts of such effecting human operability and health. Spacecraft operability must be “fail-safe” to ensure these basic human life support conditions are maintained throughout the mission and the mission(s) must be affordable. There are known effects and unknowns effects regarding aspects of human health for Mars duration missions. Mars has the order of a third g. We have no data regarding the health impacts of this on humans or the combinatorial effects associated with 45% GCR on the Martian surface over time. There is a suspicion that if humans survive such conditions over long times they will evolve to living at reduced g and become “Martians”. Cascading failures and subcritical degradations in systems of systems causing an overall unrecoverable failure are a potential issue. There are two exremely complex systems associated with humans-Mars missions: the technical, engineering, and architectural system of systems that enable the mission and the humans. Both need to be mutually configured and operated to mitigate the overall risks and hazards of the mission. Regarding the humans that mitigation includes both the mission risks and supporting-to-increasing the human immune and other concomitant physiological systems. This report will summarize the risks, current mitigation approaches, and putative approaches including lifestyle, nutrition, and “wellness” approaches to possibly improve the human capacity to withstand the large number of combinatorial human physiological rigors of the missions. The wellness observations also apply to and are derived from Earth terrestrial applicable research.

Dennis M Bushnell↗
NASA NTRS2012

Object-Oriented Bayesian Networks (OOBN) for Aviation Accident Modeling and Technology Portfolio Impact Assessment

The concern for reducing aviation safety risk is rising as the National Airspace System in the United States transforms to the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen). The NASA Aviation Safety Program is committed to developing an effective aviation safety technology portfolio to meet the challenges of this transformation and to mitigate relevant safety risks. The paper focuses on the reasoning of selecting Object-Oriented Bayesian Networks (OOBN) as the technique and commercial software for the accident modeling and portfolio assessment. To illustrate the benefits of OOBN in a large and complex aviation accident model, the in-flight Loss-of-Control Accident Framework (LOCAF) constructed as an influence diagram is presented. An OOBN approach not only simplifies construction and maintenance of complex causal networks for the modelers, but also offers a well-organized hierarchical network that is easier for decision makers to exploit the model examining the effectiveness of risk mitigation strategies through technology insertions.

Shih, Ann T.↗
DOE OSTI2020

Organizational Conflicts of Interest Disclosure Update Statement (FY2019)

The National Technology & Engineering Solutions of Sandia, LLC (NTESS) Prime Contract department manages an organizational conflicts of interest (OCI) program that is designed to provide NTESS employees an accessible means to assist in identifying potential OCI risk and providing development support services to avoid, neutralize, or mitigate the risk. The OCI program is responsible for maintaining a regulatory infrastructure, such as corporate OCI policy and training content, to comply with NTESS's obligations set forth in prime contract clauses H-4: ORGANIZATIONAL CONFLICT OF INTEREST (OCI) — SPECIAL PROVISION and Section I Department of Energy Acquisition Regulation 952.209-72, Organizational Conflicts of Interest, Alternate I, paragraph (c)(1), Disclosure After Award. Risk identification is a key OCI program priority. Providing employees with a straight-forward, accessible and navigable mechanism to identify potential OCI risk will assist the OCI program in meeting this priority.

96 KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AND PRESERVATION↗
NASA NTRS2023

A Review of the Safety of Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors for Long Duration Spaceflight

Introduction: As humankind ventures further into the depths of space, planning is already underway for long-duration exploration missions that will test the bounds of human performance. Deep space travel will include added risk related to stressors from the isolated, confined, and extreme (ICE) environment that lies outside the boundaries of low-earth orbit. Currently, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) are considered the gold standard treatment for many mental health diagnoses including anxiety and depression; however, SSRIs are also associated with several undesired side effects. The utility of non-pharmacologic therapies for the management of behavioral health conditions has not yet been fully explored. Methods: A comprehensive literature search was performed using PubMed and relevant articles pertaining to the psychological impacts of ICE environments, use of SSRIs in spaceflight, side effects associated with SSRIs, and non-pharmacologic treatments for anxiety and depression were reviewed. Over 100 studies were reviewed in total. Results: Reduced bone mineral density, impaired hemostatic function, significant individual variability resulting from gene polymorphisms, and drug-drug interactions are well described adverse effects of SSRIs that may complicate their operational use in the deep space environment. Many non-pharmacologic therapies have been utilized with success for the management of behavioral health conditions in the terrestrial environment that may show promise for long duration missions. Discussion: Although SSRIs have long been considered standard of care treatment for many behavioral health conditions, we cannot trivialize the risk that prolonged pharmacologic therapy may pose. The need to mitigate these risks by exploring alternative non-pharmacologic therapies has never been more relevant.

Charles H Dukes↗
DOE OSTI2024

ORNL Peer Review Summary and Recommendations for: Advanced Reactor Designs Security Analysis, Risk, and Recommendations: Risks, Consequences, and Possible Design Mitigation Approaches Associated with Select Advanced Reactors Study

The purpose of this document is to provide a summary of the peer review conducted for the "Advanced Reactor Designs Security Analysis, Risk, and Recommendations: Risks, Consequences, and Possible Design Mitigation Approaches Associated with Select Advanced Reactors" study prepared by researchers at Idaho National Laboratory (INL), Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) International Nuclear Security (INS) program team requested that ORNL perform a peer review of the study report prior to publication as a final peer check before distributing the report to a broader audience.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗
DOE OSTI2020

Managing Insurance Cost and Business Risk

This fact sheet explores the role insurance and re-insurance industries play in mitigating resilience risk and offers best practices for building owners to work effectively with insurers. It also reviews the types of insurance coverages relevant to resilience as well as efforts by the insurance industry to respond to increased risk.

Commercial, Resilience, Resiliency, Financing, Ins↗