Ballin M G
NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA 94035, USA.
Life Support Biosph Sci. 1995 Summer;2(1):11-29.
Applied research and technology development is often characterized by uncertainty, risk, and significant delays before tangible returns are obtained. Decision making regarding which technologies to advance and what resources to devote to them is a challenging but essential task, especially in a resource-constrained environment. In the application of life support technology to future manned space flight, new technology concepts typically are characterized by rough approximations of technology performance, uncertain future flight program needs, and a complex, time-intensive process to develop technology to a flight-ready status. Decision analysis is a quantitative, logic-based discipline that imposes formalism and structure to complex problems confronting a decision maker. It also accounts for the limits of knowledge available at the time a decision is needed. The utility of decision analysis to life support technology R&D was evaluated by applying it to two case studies. The methodology was found to provide useful insight for making technology development resource allocation decisions.
应用研究和技术开发往往具有不确定性、风险，并且在获得切实回报之前会有显著延迟。决定推进哪些技术以及为其投入哪些资源是一项具有挑战性但又至关重要的任务，尤其是在资源受限的环境中。在将生命支持技术应用于未来载人航天飞行时，新技术概念通常具有技术性能粗略近似、未来飞行计划需求不确定以及将技术开发到可用于飞行状态的复杂且耗时的过程等特点。决策分析是一门基于定量和逻辑的学科，它为决策者面临的复杂问题引入形式化和结构化。它还考虑了做出决策时可用知识的局限性。通过将决策分析应用于两个案例研究，评估了其对生命支持技术研发的效用。结果发现该方法可为做出技术开发资源分配决策提供有用的见解。
