Economics of Human Systems Integration: A Systems Engineering Perspective

Human Systems Integration (HSI) is the collection of interdisciplinary technical and management processes for integrating human considerations within and across all system elements. This discipline seeks to treat humans as equally important to system design as are other system elements, such as hardware and software. HSI has been defined by many stakeholders, particularly government agencies that advocate the “total system” approach, which incorporates humans, technology, the operational context, and the necessary interfaces between. HSI considerations include the following nine domains: manpower, personnel, training, human factors engineering, environment, safety, occupational health, habitability, and survivability. This paper introduces one area of a larger research project, sponsored by the U.S Air Force, which seeks to develop an approach for determining what percentage of the overall systems engineering activity should be allocated to HSI in order to effectively consider these nine domains as part of the overall systems engineering effort. We describe previous relevant work, including a case study of our own, related to the development of “HSI Size” as a function of HSI Requirements, and discuss how those requirements can be integrated into a parametric cost estimation model.