A NUMERICAL TAXONOMY METHOD TO EVALUATE AND PREDICT EQUIPMENT PERFORMANCE FROM ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING DATA,
Abstract
Environmental engineering seeks solutions to particularized problems about equipment compatability with natural and man-made environments. Since World War II environmental engineering has become costly, time consuming and a big consumer of lead time in product development. However, since World War II considerable environmental effects data about equipment performance has been painstakingly obtained and stored. These data are pertinent and relevant to present day equipment. It is accessible -- yet, it isn't being used. The engineering community continues to design and test rather than 'search' the literature for these environmental effects data. As an element of engineering, information is meaningful only in terms of decision making, and decision making patterns related to physical systems. Raw description doesn't adequately fit this pattern, so the engineer cannot use it. Information retrieval system effectiveness is now measured by the number of hits vs misses of relevant documents retrieved. This is not enough for the engineer, he needs information, not data or some documents that might contain what he is looking for. The proposed method developed herein corrects this situation by converting the raw documental data into usable information directly applicable to the engineer's decision process in terms related to performance of physical systems. It does so by introducing into the information retrieval process a system of numerical taxonomies that are clinically diagnostic of equipment performance characteristics. These taxonomies are descriptive throughout the range from failure to oversuccess and are called 'ENVIRONMENTAL PREDICTORS'.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Apr 01, 1967
- Accession Number
- AD0653621
Entities
People
- Maurice H. Simpson
Organizations
- Frankford Arsenal