Jack M. Kloeber

Evaluating information assurance strategies

The information revolution has provided new and improved capabilities to rapidly disseminate and employ information in decision-making. Enhancing and enabling for todays modern industry, these capabilities are critical to our national infrastructures. These capabilities, however, often rely upon systems interconnected throughout the world, resulting in potentially increased vulnerability to attack and compromise of data by globally dispersed threats.This paper develops a methodology facilitating the generation of information assurance strategies and implementing measures to assess them. Upon reviewing key factors and features of information assurance, value focused thinking is used to develop an information assurance analysis framework.

Safety Risk Analysis of an Innovative Environmental Technology

The authors describe a decision and risk analysis performed for the cleanup of a large Department of Energy mixed-waste subsurface disposal area governed by the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA). In a previous study, the authors worked with the site decision makers, state regulators, and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regional regulators to develop a CERCLA-based multiobjective decision analysis value model and used the model to perform a screening analysis of 28 remedial alternatives. The analysis results identified an innovative technology, in situ vitrification, with high effectiveness versus cost. Since this technology had not been used on this scale before, the major uncertainties were contaminant migration and pressure buildup. Pressure buildup was a safety concern due to the potential risks to worker safety. With the help of environmental technology experts remedial alternative changes were identified to mitigate the concerns about contaminant migration and pressure buildup. The analysis results showed that the probability of an event with a risk to worker safety had been significantly reduced. Based on these results, site decision makers have refocused their test program to examine in situ vitrification and have continued the use of the CERCLA-based decision analysis methodology to analyze remedial alternatives.

Multiobjective Value Analysis of Army Basic Training

Basic combat training is the first course in initial entry training for U.S. Army enlisted soldiers. The training may be considered a portfolio of training tasks. A small number of tasks were suspected to be of lesser quality. Multiobjective decision analysis was employed to evaluate the tasks using stakeholder groups from various organizational levels. The results identified areas for improvement and also provided insight about how personnel at various levels of the training organization viewed the tasks and their training value differently. The decision maker adopted a number of recommendations and the valuation exercise provided a useful process for eliciting informal feedback from organization members. Several lessons learned from the study should be useful to others, including the benefit of examining stakeholders vertically in an organization and techniques that were helpful in gaining acceptance of decision analysis as the approach of choice.

A Comparative Analysis of Hazardous Waste Remediation Alternatives

The US Department of Energy (DOE) has 136 contaminated nuclear-processing sites requiring remediation. Exploiting new remediation techniques will be critical to containing and treating this hazardous waste and to minimizing the estimated multibillion-dollar costs of cleanup. We combined system simulation, facility layout, stochastic life-cycle cost estimation, linear optimization, and various decision analysis techniques in a nine-month effort to give decision makers in the DOE realistic, flexible, and useful information to guide them in making decisions on Superfund remediation technology worth billions. A small team of students and instructors from the Air Force Institute of Technology used the majority of the techniques and tools taught at the institute to tackle this complex and important decision problem.

Advanced Analytics for Agricultural Product Development

Syngenta, a leading developer of crop varieties (seeds) that provide food for human and livestock consumption, is committed to bringing greater food security to an increasingly populous world by creating a transformational shift in farm productivity. Syngenta Soybean Research and Development (R&D) is leading Syngenta’s corporate plant-breeding strategy by developing and implementing a new product development model that is enabling the creation of an efficient and effective soybean breeding strategy. Key to the new strategy is the combination of advanced analytics and plant-breeding knowledge to find opportunities to increase crop productivity and optimize plant-breeding processes. Syngenta uses discrete-event and Monte Carlo simulation models to codify Syngenta Soybean R&D best practices, and uses stochastic optimization to create the best soybean breeding plans and strategically align its research efforts. As a result of using these new analytical tools, Syngenta estimates that it will save more than

Simulation and optimization of a new waste remediation process

287 million between 2012 and 2016.

An Empirical Examination of Multiple Objective Risk Attitudes

In the development of large scale technologically advanced projects and procedures, it is often necessary to project the life cycle cost elements of a full production system based upon test results from a much smaller prototype facility. This paper describes an application of simulation to characterize equipment and facilities for a large-scale vitrification plant, based upon available results, expert opinion, and classical cost estimating techniques. This study improves the understanding of the vitrification process and reduced cost uncertainties. Further, it details how optimization was incorporated in modeling the minimum additive waste stabilization blending process to reduce the cost of additives and provide a more rigorous estimate of overall system cost.

Object-oriented simulation of paratrooper-vortex interactions

We experimentally examined the relationships between the measurable value and utility functions of a nonmonetary multidimensional decision situation for a number of subjects. We found that value and utility were not equivalent constructs. We tested five families of functions and found the sigmoid function performed best as a transform from value to utility. Constant relative risk aversion was not observed. The methods of probability equivalent and certainty equivalent utility elicitation provided similar results, which differs from previous work using economic decisions.

Issues in using a DIS facility in analysis

The C-17 Airdrop Model provides the Air Force and Army test and evaluation community with the capability to (i) assess the risk of vortex encounters, and (ii) predict ground dispersal patterns on the drop zone. Written in MODSIM III, aircraft vortices and paratroopers are modeled as objects whose behavior accurately reflect s their real-world counterparts through the use of pre-validated aerodynamic and trajectory equations within the objects’ methods. This model has provided the joint airborne community with a preliminary estimate of paratrooper/vortex encounter rates and locations as a function of formation element separation and wind conditions, as well as a tool for simulating alternative C-17 aircraft formation configurat ions prior to actual flight. Future use of the model suggests simulating brigade-size operations; expanding to include equipment drops, new parachute deployment systems, and precision airdrop; visualization; and, evaluating new airborne combat tactics.

Selecting a Portfolio of Technologies: An Application of Decision Analysis

This paper analyzes the future prospects for the use of the Theater Battle Arena (TBA) specifically, and Distributed Interactive Simulation (DIS) facilities in general, in conducting analysis for senior Air Force leadership. The desire is to broaden the use of the TBA in the arena of combat analysis. We believe that such a study would benefit other participants in the Advanced Distributed Simulation (ADS) environment as they plan, develop, construct, and upgrade facilities that take advantage of the still emerging ADS technology.