An integrated engineering environment is described wherein multidisciplinary capabilities are provided for addressing the role of humans in complex systems. The integration of these capabilities is based on the implementation of a common system design repository in a client-server architecture. The approach is based on the definition of an integrated process to support the engineering of large, complex systems which include humans as operators and decision makers. Such a process is by necessity multidisciplinary in that diverse specialties are required in order to achieve a well-balanced design. The implementation and execution of the process requires a collaborative approach across the various disciplines in order to define desired human roles in the system and to trade off between human and non-human implementation of system functionality. To enable the collaborative process and to manage the complexity of the evolving design, an integrated design environment is defined. The capabilities ofthe integrated environment support both system level and human engineering level design activities.A system data base schema is also defined to enable the implementation of a common design repository for integrated product and process management and to assure interoperabiity of the associated tools within the environment.
This paper will introduce the development of an information representation schema that can be used to support the development of complex human centric systems. Technology that was adopted to support schema evolution to accommodate new methods and tools or schema tailoring for the need of a specific program will also be addressed.
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