National Adaptive Stress Research Institute
NASRI organizes its research portfolio into six active program areas, each administered by the human factors division under a separate task order and reviewed on a twelve month cycle. The descriptions below summarize unclassified work only. Activity conducted under restricted task orders is not described on this site.
Every field run conducted under any program designator is facilitated in person by the founder and chairman, Dr. Charles R. Ellery. Dr. Ellery is present at the site for the full duration of each run, sets the conditions, and signs the closing record. This has been the practice since 1983 and has not varied. Runs are not scheduled in his absence.
Program Designator: CRO-4 / Contract Vehicle: RCO-D-93-0118, Task Order 14
CRO is the primary program of the human factors division and has operated continuously since 1994. The program measures how long behavioral compliance holds in civilian populations exposed to prolonged operational stress, and identifies the point at which it stops holding. The work involves the observation of human subjects under sustained stress in controlled field environments. Subjects are enrolled in cohorts of forty, placed at an enclosed field site for a scheduled interval of between 96 hours and 21 days, and observed continuously for the duration of that interval. Compliance with instruction is logged at fixed intervals against elapsed time, resource availability, and group size. Where compliance ends, the conditions present at that point are recorded.
Cohort results are reduced to compliance decay curves and returned to the Evolutionary-Stress Framework (ESF) as calibration input. Segmented curves are issued to municipal and industrial partners for use in containment zone staffing, evacuation sequencing, and baseline continuity planning at critical infrastructure hubs. The three field sites lie within the controlled ground of the main facility, in Clark and Nye counties, Nevada. Site selection criteria, subject intake procedures, and instrumentation schedules are documented in NASRI-TR-95-012, available to contracted partners on request.
Current status: Active. Site 1 and Site 2. Site 4 in caretaker status since March 1998. Cohort 33 closed January 1999. Public reporting of field validations concluded December 1998.
Program Designator: SBCM-2 / Contract Vehicle: DLSC-91-D-4472, Task Order 6
SBCM maps macro-level societal variables against micro-level neurological and biochemical thresholds. The program maintains a national population matrix at the county level, weighted for employment concentration, household density, transit dependency, and distance to the nearest critical infrastructure hub. Each cell in the matrix carries an institutional cohesion index and an estimated mass-psychological coping threshold expressed in days.
Secondary work under SBCM tracks panic contagion vectors, meaning the routes and rates by which behavioral disruption moves between adjacent population segments. Vector modeling draws on transit records, municipal service call volumes, and cohort observations returned by CRO. The 1998 matrix revision covered 3,142 counties and independent cities.
Current status: Active. 1999 matrix revision scheduled for completion in the third quarter.
Program Designator: NTO-6 / Contract Vehicle: NAS-94-C-2207, Task Order 19
NTO examines variation in stress tolerance across cognitive and neurological profiles. The program identifies profiles that retain instruction-following capacity past the cohort median under sustained operational stress, and profiles that fall below it. Results are expressed as threshold offsets against the general population baseline established by SBCM.
The applied output of NTO is a screening instrument used to sort personnel and civilian subjects by projected performance under prolonged stress. The instrument consists of 84 items and a supervised task battery, and requires approximately two hours to administer. It is currently in use for workforce insulation planning with two industrial partners and for cohort assignment within CRO. Validation is ongoing against field results rather than laboratory results.
Current status: Active. Instrument revision 3.1 released November 1998.
Program Designator: ESFM-3 / Contract Vehicle: DLSC-91-D-4472, Task Order 9
ESFM is the computational arm of the Evolutionary-Stress Framework. The program models behavioral compliance vectors across a defined population segment and projects the sequence in which those vectors fail during a systemic failure cascade. Simulation runs are executed on the facility computation center and require between four and eleven hours per scenario at standard resolution.
Model accuracy depends on field validation. Projected decay rates are compared against observed decay rates returned by CRO cohorts, and coefficients are adjusted after each cohort closes. Current models project compliance loss under conditions of high-consequence geopolitical disruption on domestic soil at a mean error of 6.2 percent against observed field values.
Current status: Active. Model release ESFM-3.4 entered production use December 1998.
Program Designator: DEWA-5 / Contract Vehicle: RCO-D-93-0118, Task Order 11
DEWA assesses the capacity of civilian subjects to reach a designated collection point across unfamiliar terrain with minimal equipment and no infrastructure support. Subjects are issued a compass, a fixed water ration, and a heading. Route selection, elapsed time to arrival, and deviation from the issued heading are recorded. Subjects who do not arrive within the scheduled window are recovered by site staff and logged as non-arrivals.
Assessment runs are conducted under graduated stress load in order to establish the relationship between duress and navigational accuracy. Across 1997 and 1998 field runs, mean deviation increased by a factor of 3.4 between the low load and high load conditions, and the non-arrival rate rose from 9 percent to 41 percent. Results support egress planning for infrastructure failure and are integrated with CRO protocols at Site 1 and Site 2.
Current status: Active. Integrated with CRO-4 field scheduling.
Program Designator: SIT-7 / Contract Vehicle: DLSC-91-D-4472, Task Order 22
SIT provides continuous physiological measurement for subjects held without social contact or environmental familiarity for extended intervals. Instrumentation consists of a chest harness and ankle unit recording heart rate variability, core temperature, respiration, and movement, with serum cortisol drawn at twelve hour intervals. Telemetry is transmitted to the site operations room at one minute resolution and archived in full.
The program identifies the physiological signature that precedes disengagement from survival behavior, which is to say the point at which a subject stops acting to preserve their own condition. In longitudinal cohorts run since 1993, that signature has appeared between 60 and 96 hours into isolation in 71 percent of cases, with a measurable narrowing of heart rate variability preceding behavioral change by four to nine hours. Telemetry from SIT is supplied to CRO and to NTO as threshold reference data.
Current status: Active. Longitudinal cohorts ongoing since 1993.
Selected findings from the programs above are released as technical reports and are listed on the Publications and Technical Reports page, with report numbers, issue dates, and ordering instructions. Reports are issued in printed form and distributed to contracted partners at no cost.
Field validation data is not publicly released. This includes cohort records, telemetry archives, site logs, and subject files, all of which are held under contract terms and are retained by the Records Office at the facility. Inquiries regarding report availability, distribution status, or records held under a specific program designator should be directed to records@nasri-us.com and should cite the designator in the subject line.
