Up until 2015 the rate at which cube satellite missions achieved full mission success was only 44.1% for any organizations rst mission (academic or corporate), the success rate increases to only 62% for cube satellites launched as a second mission. This thesis suggests that there are two main sources for the high failure rate: improper veri cation, and the common use of COTS components and their reliability in a space environment. The thesis provides a means of increasing mission assurance through the use of physics of failure reliability estimation models that incorporate the intrinsic and extrinsic failures of thermal mechanical e ects as well as radiation e ects on EEE components, a design methodology is also presented that incorporates reliability modeling as well as thorough software and hardware in loop testing to prevent failure due to improper veri cation. The environment and reliability models are calculated for the on board command and data handling system of the ECOSat- II cube satellite being developed by the University of Victoria ECOSat team using NX Siemens for thermal FEA modelling, SPENVIS for radiation environment, and MATLAB for reliability calculation. / Graduate / 0544 / 0538 / cass.hussmann@gmail.com

How do organizations rapidly assess command-level effects of cyber attacks? Leaders need a way of assuring themselves that their organization, people, and information technology can continue their missions in a contested cyber environment. To do this, leaders should: 1) require assessments be more than analogical, anecdotal or simplistic snapshots in time; 2) demand the ability to rapidly model their organizations; 3) identify their organization’s structural vulnerabilities; and 4) have the ability to forecast mission assurance scenarios. Using text mining to build agent based dynamic network models of information processing organizations, I examine impacts of contested cyber environments on three common focus areas of information assurance—confidentiality, integrity, and availability. I find that assessing impacts of cyber attacks is a nuanced affair dependent on the nature of the attack, the nature of the organization and its missions, and the nature of the measurements. For well-manned information processing organizations, many attacks are in the nuisance range and that only multipronged or severe attacks cause meaningful failure. I also find that such organizations can design for resiliency and provide guidelines in how to do so.

How do organizations rapidly assess command-level effects of cyber attacks? Leaders need a way of assuring themselves that their organization, people, and information technology can continue their missions in a contested cyber environment. To do this, leaders should: 1) require assessments be more than analogical, anecdotal or simplistic snapshots in time; 2) demand the ability to rapidly model their organizations; 3) identify their organization’s structural vulnerabilities; and 4) have the ability to forecast mission assurance scenarios. Using text mining to build agent based dynamic network models of information processing organizations, I examine impacts of contested cyber environments on three common focus areas of information assurance—confidentiality, integrity, and availability. I find that assessing impacts of cyber attacks is a nuanced affair dependent on the nature of the attack, the nature of the organization and its missions, and the nature of the measurements. For well-manned information processing organizations, many attacks are in the nuisance range and that only multipronged or severe attacks cause meaningful failure. I also find that such organizations can design for resiliency and provide guidelines in how to do so.

This dissertation defines and evaluates new operations management modeling concepts for use with interdependent critical infrastructure system reconfiguration and recovery analysis. The work combines concepts from Graph Trace Analysis (GTA), Object Oriented Analysis and Design (OOAandD), the Unified Modeling Language (UML) and Physical Network Modeling; and applies them to naval ship reduced manned Hull, Mechanical, Electrical and Damage Control (HMEandDC) system design and operation management. OOAandD problem decomposition is used to derive a natural solution structure that simplifies integration and uses mission priority and mission time constraint relationships to reduce the number of system states that must be evaluated to produce a practical solution. New concepts presented include the use of dependency components and automated system model traces to structure mission priority based recovery analysis and mission readiness measures that can be used for automating operations management analysis. New concepts for developing power and fluid system GTA loop flow analysis convergence measures and acceleration factors are also presented. / Ph. D.