MIT researchers launch interactive tool linking habitat design to mental health in extreme environments

Engineers at MIT have published an interactive online platform that connects specific habitat design features to behavioral health outcomes for people living in extreme, isolated, and confined environments. The tool, called the Human-Environment Connection and Interaction Atlas (HECIA), was described in a study appearing in the journal npj Microgravity.

The project was led by Mich Lin, a PhD candidate in MIT's Human Systems Lab and Engineering Systems Lab, with co-authors including former MIT undergraduate Lu Chen and Professor Katya Arquilla of the University of Colorado Boulder. Contributors also came from KBR/NASA, the space architecture firm Different Systems, and MIT undergraduate Kara Chou.

The team conducted an extensive literature review and expert interviews to identify 14 key emotions and experiences — including anxiety, autonomy, nostalgia, curiosity, fatigue, and kinship — that are relevant to long-duration missions. They then mapped how design factors such as lighting levels, circulation paths, privacy provisions, and reconfigurable spaces influence those outcomes.

The researchers modeled the atlas on NASA's directed acyclic graphs, which are used to map physical health risks in spaceflight. HECIA adapts this format for less tangible behavioral outcomes, allowing designers to trace forward from a design decision to its psychological effects or backward from a desired outcome to the features that support it.

For example, a designer concerned about homesickness can select "nostalgia/homesickness" and see upstream factors such as "place attachment," which in turn links to design elements like reconfigurability and privacy. Another pathway shows how access paths, stairs, and entrances contribute to friendship formation and social cohesion.

Each connection in the atlas is accompanied by a summary drawn from empirical research, describing the term in the context of extreme habitats and offering examples of design interventions. The team emphasizes that the tool is not a one-size-fits-all prescription but a way to surface connections that might not be immediately obvious.

Lin notes that the framework applies beyond space habitats to submarines, oil rigs, polar stations, refugee camps, and other high-stress isolated settings. The research was supported in part by NASA.

The platform is intended to help engineers move beyond survival-mode design toward habitats where crews can thrive on missions to the Moon, Mars, and other extreme environments.