Application of an Entropic Approach to Assessing Systems Integration

Abstract

Systems integration is a major endeavor in the development of a system. The goal of integration is to bring separately developed components to create the required system within both the defined schedule and the allocated budget. An entropic approach to assessing the success in attaining the goal, i.e., systems integration success, involves representing the system as a network, whose nodes are the elements of the system and whose links are the connections among the elements, and determining and tracking system network entropy. The work in this thesis considers more than two possible states for each link, explicitly assigning probabilistic measures to systems development and integration activities, and applying it to the integration of a robot used in the detection and destruction of improvised explosive devices. This work demonstrates the feasibility of applying this entropic approach to assessing systems integration success and, specifically, the feasibility of using network entropy as a metric to aid in systems integration.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Mar 01, 2012
Accession Number
ADA561768

Entities

People

  • Hui F. Tan

Organizations

  • Naval Postgraduate School

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Autonomy
  • Cyber
  • Energy and Power Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Classification
  • Communication Systems
  • Complex Systems
  • Detection
  • Detectors
  • Engineering
  • Explosive Devices
  • Explosives
  • Improvised Explosive Devices
  • Information Systems
  • Markov Chains
  • Monte Carlo Method
  • Probability
  • Risk
  • Risk Analysis
  • Simulations
  • Systems Engineering

Fields of Study

  • Computer science

Readers

  • Aerospace Test and Evaluation
  • Computational Modeling and Simulation
  • Organizational Process Management (OPM).

Technology Areas

  • AI & ML
  • Autonomy