Systems Engineering for the Digital Age

Chapter 4Digital Engineering Visualization Technologies and Techniques

Brian Chell, Tom Hagedorn, Roger Jones, and Mark R. Blackburn

Stevens Institute of Technology, School of Systems and Enterprises, Hoboken, NJ, USA

Problem

A major challenge in mission and systems engineering is reconciling the differences between the actual needs of the end users, and how developers perceive those needs. It is important to get these different entities on the “same page,” with a shared concept of the system within its operational environment (Larson et al. 2009). It is accepted that with the maturing of DE technologies that documents are inadequate to facilitate the DE transformation. In addition, managing changes through complex toolsets and providing useful information without overloading those who do not have domain knowledge can be difficult. Visualization technologies are a good method for articulating details about the system analysis and design in a language that engineers, relevant stakeholders, and end users can all understand. The Concept of Operations (CONOPs) can be a means to bridge this gap significantly (AIAA 1993). The visualization of engineering data can take the form of simple plots and figures all the way to immersive environments enabled by gaming technology that supports virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR). In the past, CONOPs have been document‐based and largely static, seeing few or no updates and being of limited use throughout system development (Korfiatis ...