<p>  </p> <p>In the wake of the first Artemis launch, humanity is more focused on space exploration and travel than it has been in the half a century since the Space Race. This time, it’s not enough just to touch down on the Moon; we want to build sustainable homes on the Moon and on Mars. The goal of long-term extra-terrestrial habitation begs the question: how do we design habitats that can protect human life so far from Earth?</p> <p><br></p> <p>The Resilient Extra-Terrestrial Habitat Institute (RETHi) has been operating for four years now building a foundation of ideologies and tools to help answer that question. The institute has developed a control-theoretic approach to habitat resilience based on a state-trigger analysis, a database of potential hazards to a habitat, metrics for resilience quantification, and simulation platforms for design verification.</p> <p><br></p> <p>The combination of these developments allows for the proposition of a resilience-oriented habitat design process. The process takes the shape of a typical systems vee and is tailored to the needs of an extra-terrestrial habitat and the tools available through RETHi. The process proposes a way to build resilience into the requirements development and design verification of extra-terrestrial habitats at three system levels. The result of this study is a discussion on how we design, evaluate, and select safety mechanisms for extra-terrestrial habitats.</p> <p><br></p> <p>Safety mechanisms are selected by simulating the habitat’s response to a disruption when equipped with one safety mechanism at a time and quantifying the habitat’s resilience. Then, the resilience of the habitats with different mechanisms are compared, illuminating the best option. Simulations for each mechanism are performed under a variety of circumstances, changing the time of day and intensity of the disruption as well as the type of repair agent carrying out the mechanism to capture the habitat’s behavior as totally as possible.</p> <p><br></p> <p>This analysis shows how different safety mechanisms performances compare and provides a basis for making design decisions.</p>

Future human exploration missions beyond Earth vicinity will be demanding, requiring highly efficient, mass-constrained systems to reduce overall mission costs and complexity. Additionally, long duration transits in space and lack of Earth abort opportunities will increase the physiological and psychological needs of the crew, which will require larger, more capable systems to ensure astronaut well-being. As a result, the objective of habitat design for these missions is to minimize mass and vehicle size while providing adequate space for all necessary equipment and a functional layout for crew health and productivity. Unfortunately, a literature review of methods for evaluating the performance of habitat interior layout designs (including human-in-the-loop mockup tests, in-depth computer-aided design evaluations, and subjective design evaluation studies) found that they are not currently compatible with the conceptual phase of design or optimization because of the qualitative nature of the comparisons and the significant time required to generate and evaluate each layout. Failure to consider interior layout design during conceptual design can lead to increased mass, compromised functionality, and increased risk to crew; particularly for the mass, cost, and volume-constrained long duration human missions to cislunar space and Mars currently being planned by NASA. A comprehensive and timely quantitative method to measure the effectiveness of interior layouts and track the complex, conflicting habitat design objectives earlier in the design process is desired. A new, structured method and modeling framework to quickly measure the effectiveness of habitat interior designs is presented. This method allows for comparison of layouts at conceptual design and advances research in the previously unavailable capability to automate the generation of habitat interiors. This evaluation method features the development of a comprehensive list of quantifiable habitat layout evaluation criteria, the development of automatic methods to measure these criteria from a geometry model and designer inputs, and the application of systems engineering tools and numerical methods to construct a multi-objective value function measuring the overall habitat layout performance. In particular, this method featured the separation of subjective designer preferences and quantitative evaluation criteria measurements to speed layout evaluations and enable automation of interior layout design subject to a set of designer preferences. This method was implemented through the construction of a software tool utilizing geometry modeling coupled with collision detection techniques to identify favorable layouts subject to multiple constraints and objectives (e.g., minimize mass, maximize contiguous habitable volume, maximize task performance efficiency). Notional cis-lunar habitat layouts were evaluated to demonstrate the effectiveness of the method. Furthermore, stochastic optimization was applied to understand and address difficulties with automated layout design, particularly constraint implementation and convergence behavior. Findings from these investigations and implications for future research are discussed.

This project covers the methodology and process of landscape architectural design with emphasis on incorporating Function-based Habitat Design into conventional design processes. The Tshwane urban realm is characterised by the lack of wildlife habitat and serves as backdrop for the new design process demonstration. This new process aims to generate habitat for both humans and the natural ecology through a principled urban framework and ecological design. It creates the opportunity to enhance biodiversity throughout the city through interference on precinct, site and detailed level. / Dissertation (ML (Prof))--University of Pretoria, 2005. / Architecture / unrestricted

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African savanna elephants (Loxodonta africana) and Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) are a focus of welfare research in zoos due to their high intelligence, complex social structure, and sheer size. Due to these challenges, some argue that zoos are inherently incapable of providing appropriate care for elephants, while others believe that zoos can fulfill the needs of these species with improved husbandry. There is a general consensus from both within and outside of zoos, however, that zoos must improve their elephant programs or cease exhibiting these animals altogether. Now more than ever, applied research on zoo elephant welfare is needed to provide context for this debate. Researchers are interested in how far zoo elephants walk due to the potential health and welfare benefits of walking in these highly mobile species. Zoo researchers recently adopted GPS technology to study elephant walking, and preliminary evidence suggests that African elephants in large zoo exhibits walk distances that correspond with wild elephants under non-extreme conditions. However, data are limited from Asian elephants and from elephants in more typically-sized exhibits. In Chapter Two, I discuss important methodological considerations of utilizing GPS in a zoo environment, including an introduction to the technology, sources of error and mitigation, methods to improve GPS performance, and possible effects of GPS device attachment on animal behavior. This review shows GPS performance is adequate for tracking zoo elephant walking when proper methodological techniques are applied, and should serve as a useful reference for zoo researchers considering using GPS. In Chapter Three, I used GPS anklets to measure outdoor daily walking distance in 56 adult female African (n = 33) and Asian (n = 23) elephants housed in 30 zoos. I collected 259 days of data and found that elephants walked an average of 5.34 km/day with no significant difference between species. Multivariate regression models predicted that elephants with more dynamic feeding regimens (more diverse feeding types and frequencies; unscheduled feeding times) will walk more. Distance walked was also predicted to be higher in elephants that spend time in a greater number of different social groups. Distance walked was predicted to decline with age. Finally, I found a significant negative correlation between distance walked and nighttime space experience. The results of the analysis suggest that zoos that want to increase walking in their elephants need not rely solely on larger exhibits, but can increase walking by adding quality and complexity to exhibits. However, my results failed to establish a definitive link between walking distance and other validated measures of elephant welfare. Thus, the direct health and welfare benefits of walking in zoo elephants remain unresolved. Resting behaviors are an essential component of animal welfare, but have received little attention in zoological research. In Chapter Four, I used accelerometers in anklets to complete the first large-scale multi-species investigation of zoo elephant recumbence. I collected 344 days of data from 72 adult female African (n = 44) and Asian (n = 28) elephants at 40 zoos. I found that African elephants are recumbent an average of 2.14 hours/day, which is significantly less than Asian elephants at 3.22 hours/day. Multivariate regression models predicted that African elephant recumbence increases when they experience more space at night, and Asian elephant recumbence increases when they spend time housed alone. Both species showed a similar response to substrate, such that African elephants spending time on all-hard substrates are predicted to be recumbent less, while Asian elephants spending time on all-soft substrates are predicted to be recumbent more. The discovery that occasional non-recumbence is a common behavior in zoo elephants also introduces a new area of research that may have important animal welfare consequences. Finally, this study established that zoos should continue their efforts to replace hard substrate with soft substrate in order to provide zoo elephants with environments that facilitate recumbence. Overall, this work assessed walking and recumbence in zoo elephants, which will allow zoos to gauge the prevalence of these behaviors in their elephants as compared to the sub-population studied here. A variety of factors that are associated with these behaviors were also identified. With this information, zoos can prioritize modifications to their facilities and animal management programs to create an environment that encourages zoo elephants to express walking and recumbence behavior, should they choose to do so. This work is one component of the Elephant Welfare Project, the largest zoo animal welfare project ever undertaken, and is unprecedented in both scope and scale. The project was funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), an independent, U.S., federal, grant-making agency that supports libraries, museums, and zoos. At the time of this writing, the first manuscripts from this project are being submitted to academic journals. These papers will describe the prevalence and distribution of a variety of elephant behaviors and welfare indicators, serve as a benchmark for future elephant welfare studies, and aid in decision making with regard to best practices in elephant management.