Human Effects Research |
Several focus areas have been established within non-lethal human effects research. These include risk assessment, effects-based design and modeling, and non-lethal effectiveness. These knowledge areas are fundamental to understanding the safety and effectiveness of developing and next-generation non-lethal technologies.
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Risk Assessment
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Risk assessment is a process that allows weapons developers to visualize a non-lethal system's human effects.
This visualization clarifies and outlines the risks associated with the system and allows developers to determine
if there is a way to use the system while mitigating risks. For example, curves are generated to define the relationship
between military utility and risk of injury.
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Effects-Based Design and Modeling
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Human effects-based design is an approach whereby non-lethal technologies are evaluated by their potential to produce
intended and unintended effects and then research plans are developed to address gaps in understanding.
These evaluations ultimately support the development of non-lethal capabilities specifically designed to mitigate known capability gaps.
The results of human effects research provide key data points that support the development of non-lethal human effects modeling and simulation tools.
In an effort to produce a common resource to predict human effects and complement the Human Effects Risk Characterization process,
the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Program has sponsored an effort to develop an Advanced Total Body Model for predicting the effects
of non-lethal impacts.
Beginning in 2004, efforts have been made to improve the fidelity of the Advanced Total Body Model through finite element modeling.
The Advanced Total Body Model continues to be modified to allow for interface with external non-lethal bioeffects models.
The intent is to develop a suite of models for the assessment of many new non-lethal stimuli specifically related to
next-generation non-lethal directed energy weapons. This modeling suite constitutes the Human Effects Modeling Analysis Program.
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Non-Lethal Weapon Effectiveness
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The Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Program non-lethal human effects community has begun to increase its focus on improving the characterization and quantification of non-lethal weapon effectiveness. In other words, researchers are attempting to better answer the question of how well the human response relates to desired mission outcomes. This area of research is critical to ensuring that the end user will get reliable, repeatable, and safe results from future non-lethal capabilities. Several efforts are ongoing in the focus area.
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