A Complex Sytems Perspective of Risk Mitigation and Modeling in Development and Acquisition Programs
Abstract
The objective of this research project is to create a quantitative objective assessment of technical risks and failures in engineered systems. This research aims to explore, formulate, and model the complex risks and failure mechanisms to improve the current inaccurate subjective assessment of risk in different stages of an engineered system development program as well as acquisition programs. Many of the systems lifecycle risks are currently assessed subjectively by imprecise methodologies such as color-coded risk matrix and subsequently they suffer from unforeseen failures as well as cost and schedule overruns. This research project proposes a novel approach to major improvement of risk assessment by creating a set of appropriate complexity measures (informed by historical case studies) as pre-indicators of emergence of risks at different stages of a systems development process, and a framework that enables the decision makers on assessing the actual risk level at each phase of the development based on requirements, design decisions and alternatives. The resulting metrics will provide an objective assessment of risk for program managers, engineers and various other stakeholders in lifecycle of a system. The results of this research project will have a broad public purpose in systems development community in various domains of engineering by improving the quantitative assessment of risk from conception of the system and requirement phase through the design, manufacturing and testing, implementation, and the retirement of the system. The new complexity-based risk assessment can be applied to various ranges of applications such as telecommunication satellite design, regional power infrastructure design and operation, and the next generation of human spaceflight vehicle and many more. The suggested technical complexity measures can warn the program manager as well as the other stakeholders on assessing the alternatives at each stage in systems lifecycle and provide an improved risk assessment and anticipation which is based on complexity content of a system in each point in time. Later direction of this research can suggest ways to reduce and manage the complexity content of a system and mitigating some of the technical risk that a system is facing.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Aug 08, 2016
- Source ID
- N002441510059
Entities
People
- Roshanak R Nilchiani
Organizations
- Stevens Institute of Technology
- United States Navy