The Science and Simulation of Human Performance

Simulations are often used in the military and other performance-critical fields (e.g., law enforcement, aviation, emergency management) to assess readiness, to support training, management, and decision making and to conduct mission rehearsal. This volume documents the state of the art and presents a state of the possible individual and small unit human performance research and simulation. Distinguished scientists from within the military, academe, government and private industry consider how best to gather and relate human performance data, and offer specific recommendations to advance the development of models and simulations of individual and small unit behavior. The result is a uniquely interdisciplinary volume that draws upon the knowledge and experience of recognized experts whose insights converge upon problems of common interest and relevance to researchers, analysts, and developers.

The Science and Simulation of Human Performance is divided into four sections. The first section of the book provides an introduction to the history and current status of human performance research, training, and assessment. This includes a comprehensive overview of how military scientists train and assess human performance.

A second section provides critical theoretical, methodological, and specific disciplinary insights toward the development of standardized operational definitions, methods, and metrics. The objective is to support the gathering of datasets that are informative and useful to modeling and simulation. Specific content areas include human cognition, health and physiology, and social factors. This section concludes with a chapter that integrates these critical aspects of human performance within a single, neurochemical framework.

A third section considers current and available techniques to support the analysis and simulation of human performance data. Chapters in this section provide critical analysis of existing models and offer specific recommendations to improve their relevance and predictive value. This section concludes with a chapter that identifies emergent themes from within the volume as a whole, offering specific conclusions and recommendations for how the current state of the art may be used to shape the state of the possible.

The fourth and final section provides key information resources, including a comprehensive overview of human performance research as it is currently conducted in defense laboratories across all branches of the armed services. The book concludes with an overview of currently available human performance models and simulations.

Contributors to this effort hope and anticipate that military and non-military scientists alike will recognize the importance of this effort to the U.S. military and to the scientific community in general.