No abstract

To the chagrin of well-intentioned Army leaders, dozens of soldiers are killed each year as a result of combat vehicle accidents. The objective of this study is to look beyond the events and symptoms of accidents which normally indicate human error, and instead study the upper-level organizational processes and problems that constitute the actual root causes of accidents. After a short review of the literature we report on our development of a system dynamics model. We then discuss the results of several simulations; these suggest that high-level decisions that balance mission rate and operations tempo with troop availability, careful management of the work-rest cycle for deployed troops, and improvement of the processes for evaluating the lessons learned from accidents would lead to a reduction in Army combat vehicle accidents.

No abstract

Since 9/11 and the creation of the U.S. Patriot Act, the intrusion of government surveillance into the lives of ordinary Americans has become a topic of great concern to many citizens. While many Americans view surveillance as a necessity in the name of national security, the government is not the only organization conducting surveillance. As technological capacity increases, an increasing number of employers are implementing technologies that allow them to maintain vigilance over the actions of their employees in the workplace. Despite many attempts to implement surveillance technologies, there is little evidence that companies are any safer now than they were ten years ago. This paper demonstrates how System Dynamics modeling can be utilized to help model the insider threat as a system. It provides analysis of the non-linear affect of decision making, assessing the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th order impacts of decisions, and demonstrates the important impact of delays in the system. A mathematical model is presented and simulations are conducted to determine the likely affect of company decisions and individual agent behavior.