Marjory S Blumenthal

In response to concerns about the research strength and practices of strategic competitors, the Basic Research Office within the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering asked the RAND National Defense Research Institute to study how the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) approaches international basic research collaboration (IBRC) and formulate suggestions for DoD to improve how it uses IBRC.

What do experts envision as the largest technology-based challenges the U.S. Joint Force could confront by 2040? The authors develop and implement a three-stage approach to elicit and evaluate ideas from experts on technology challenges that are ?radically altering.? Twenty challenges were identified and evaluated by experts. These evaluations allowed the authors to classify those challenges into three clusters to help inform how the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) could prioritize science and technology (S&T) investments.

Establishing whether automated vehicles (AVs) are acceptably safe is not straightforward, and continual technology modification adds complication. RAND researchers analyzed three approaches to assessing safety-measurements, processes, and thresholds-and noted the different kinds of evidence associated with each. This report also describes the challenges and options related to communicating about AV safety, especially to the general public.

RAND Corporation researchers reviewed metrics for evaluating research portfolios used by medical research organizations and appraised their characteristics and trade-offs associated with their use. This report presents the results, categorized using a logic-model approach, to help organizations responsible for research portfolios to select, develop, and revise the metrics they use in their evaluations.

This report presents a framework for measuring safety in automated vehicles (AVs) that could be used broadly by companies, policymakers, and the public. In it, the authors considered how to define safety for AVs, how to measure safety for AVs, and how to communicate what is learned or understood about AVs. The report also identifies key concepts and illuminates the kinds of measurements that might be made and communicated.