The motivation for this work is human-factors-influenced vibration attenuation using high-speed craft (HSC) shock-mitigating seats. The high-g loads occurring at the seat-deck interface locations during slam impacts in moderate to high seas results in serious potential for injury to the occupants. Since various designs and types of shockmitigating seats are available, quantifying their shock attenuation characteristics can be challenging. The need for a standard testing platform and experimental analysis to investigate a seat's effectiveness forms the major objective of research being carried out by Carleton University's Applied Dynamics Laboratory (ADL) in partnership with Defence Research and Development Canada-Atlantic (DRDC-Atlantic).A drop tower was designed and manufactured by the ADL for testing seats in order to characterize their shock mitigating effectiveness by simulating the severe conditions of a slam impact at sea through the use of singular impact testing. Further, in order to identify the seats' dynamic parameters from drop test data, the Eigensystem Realization Algorithm (ERA), a modal-analysis-based system identification method, was applied to two commercial shock-mitigating seats provided by DRDC-Atlantic.The technique was shown to successfully extract the damping ratio as well as the damped and undamped natural frequencies of the seats from impact test data. The dynamic properties of the seats derived from the ERA can be tabulated vis-a-vis their vibration performance metrics illustrated in the thesis, which can subsequently inform decisions related to the design and/or procurement of commercial seats. ii 6.3.