EAGER/Collaborative Research: Demonstrating the Importance of Research Setting Representativeness in Systems Engineering and Design Research

EAGER/协作研究：展示研究环境代表性在系统工程和设计研究中的重要性

• 批准号: 1841109
• 负责人: Paul Grogan
• 金额: $ 5.92万
• 依托单位: Stevens Institute of Technology
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2018
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2018-09-01 至 2021-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1841109&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: EAGER; Collaborative; Research; Demonstrating; Importance

This EArly-concept Grant for Exploratory Research (EAGER) grant supports fundamental research into the factors that determine whether a research setting is sufficiently representative of real-world systems engineering and design situations. Designing complex engineering systems such as critical infrastructure, capital-intensive projects, and national defense systems involves large design teams consisting of hundreds to thousands of individuals over timescales reaching into decades. This project addresses the fundamental issue of understanding the design of such complex engineering systems using simpler, shorter-duration, and more controlled research settings. The research objective of this project is to explore the creation and validation of standards for research setting representativeness to assess whether and the extent to which findings from one research setting can be extend to others. If successful, this work will transform research in the community by enabling more efficient knowledge aggregation through a rigorous methodological foundation for assessing how well, and in what dimensions, research settings represent their real counterparts. This foundation will enrich empirical and theory-driven research within the systems engineering and design community by improving validity assessment of research outcomes across diverse methodological perspectives. As a crucial component of this project, results will be disseminated to diverse audience through presentations and workshops at community-specific conferences. Dissemination and community-building activities will foster an ongoing conversation around the need for shared standards and consensus for the kinds of knowledge to be gained from diverse research settings and methodological approaches. The core intellectual contributions of this high-risk high-reward work are to identify dimensions of research setting representativeness, understand how they impact design and execution of research studies, and demonstrate a methodology to generate insights regarding representativeness. Two pilot studies will probe varying dimensions of representativeness for a spacecraft design process. The first pilot study will compare the real spacecraft design process to a concurrent design environment with a smaller team working on a shorter timescale. The second pilot study will compare a fully abstracted function optimization game to a more representative game that models the context and technical dependencies of a spacecraft in the optimization problem. The pilot studies will demonstrate the viability of studying the effects of research setting representativeness on designer behaviors. The potential exists that research setting representativeness is impractical to characterize well, which is a principal risk factor for this project. However, the potential reward is equally high. If successful, results from this project are expected to provide the foundation of multi-method, multi-scale research, allowing researchers to interpret, evaluate, and build on each other?s results across different research methodologies. This would transform the research community and enable new discoveries that far exceed current research capabilities.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

这项探索性研究（急切）拨款的早期概念赠款支持对决定研究环境是否充分代表现实世界系统工程和设计情况的基本研究。设计复杂的工程系统，例如关键基础设施，资本密集型项目和国防系统，涉及大型设计团队，这些设计团队由数百到数百个个人组成，到达数十年。该项目解决了使用更简单，较短的效力和更受控的研究设置理解此类复杂工程系统设计的基本问题。该项目的研究目标是探索研究设置代表性的创建和验证，以评估一个研究环境中发现的程度以及在其上是否可以扩展到他人。如果成功的话，这项工作将通过严格的方法论基础来评估如何良好的方法以及在哪些方面代表其真正的对应物，从而改变社区中的研究。该基础将通过改善各种方法论观点的研究成果评估的有效性评估来丰富系统工程和设计社区中的经验和理论驱动的研究。作为该项目的关键组成部分，结果将通过社区特定会议的演讲和讲习班将结果传播给不同的受众。传播和社区建设活动将促进对共同标准和共识的需求进行持续的对话，以从各种研究环境和方法论方法中获得的知识所获得的共识。这项高风险高回报工作的核心智力贡献是确定研究设置代表性的维度，了解它们如何影响研究研究的设计和执行，并展示一种产生有关代表性的见解的方法。两项初步研究将在航天器设计过程中探测代表性的不同维度。第一项试点研究将将真正的航天器设计过程与并发设计环境与一个较小的团队进行较短的时间尺度进行比较。第二项试点研究将将完全抽象的功能优化游戏与更具代表性的游戏进行比较，该游戏在优化问题中对航天器的上下文和技术依赖性进行了建模。试点研究将证明研究设置代表性对设计师行为的影响的生存能力。存在研究设置代表性的潜力是不切实际的，这是该项目的主要风险因素。但是，潜在的奖励同样高。如果成功的话，该项目的结果有望为多方法，多规模研究提供基础，使研究人员可以在不同的研究方法中解释，评估和基础。这将改变研究界，并使新发现远远超过当前的研究能力。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并使用基金会的知识分子优点和更广泛的影响审查标准，被认为值得通过评估来获得支持。

项目成果

A call for consensus on the use of representative model worlds in systems engineering and design

呼吁就系统工程和设计中代表性模型世界的使用达成共识

• DOI: 10.1002/sys.21536
• 发表时间: 2020
• 期刊: Systems Engineering
• 影响因子: 2
• 作者: Szajnfarber, Zoe;Grogan, Paul T.;Panchal, Jitesh H.;Gralla, Erica L.
• 通讯作者: Gralla, Erica L.

Designing Representative Model Worlds to Study Socio-Technical Phenomena: A Case Study of Communication Patterns in Engineering Systems Design

• DOI: 10.1115/1.4048295
• 发表时间: 2020-12
• 期刊: Journal of Mechanical Design
• 影响因子: 3.3
• 作者: Ashish M. Chaudhari;E. Gralla;Z. Szajnfarber;P. Grogan;Jitesh H. Panchal