A Systems Complexity-based Risk Assessment and Management of Acquisition Programs
Abstract
The objective of this research project is to further development and research of a quantitative objective assessment of technical risks and failures in engineered systems based on previous years research (NPS BAA 14-002 and NPS BAA 15-001). This research aims to discover, formulate and manage the relationship between the quantitative complexity content of an acquisition or engineering development program (at any point in lifecycle) and its relationship to the increased actual technical as well as programmatic risk respectively, where the main goal is to improve the current inaccurate subjective practice of assessment of risk in different stages of a wide range of engineered system development programs as well as acquisition programs. Currently systems lifecycle risks are assessed subjectively by methodologies such as color-coded risk matrix that are heavily subjective in their nature. Subsequently many engineered systems development programs suffer from unforeseen technical and programmatic failures; frequent cost and schedule overruns that often stem from inaccurate risk identification and assessments. This research proposal focuses on expanding on the novel approach to risk assessment by refining and performing experiments with a set of new development-phase-appropriate complexity measures (informed by historical case studies) as pre-indicators of emergence of risks at different stages of a systems development process and lifecycle. Based on current ongoing research, we will refine the complexity measures in various stages of lifecycle of a system and will probe several historical case studies of engineered systems success or failures. The focus of this part of research will be on discovering the relationship between the measured complexity of the program and the increased amount of technical as well as some programmatic risks in development of complex engineered systems. The focus of the case studies chosen will be at the requirement and the preliminary design review and the relationship between the complexity of a particular complex engineered system to various manifestation of increased (or decreased) technical as well as some programmatic risks. Multiple historical as well as theoretical cases of design of complex engineered systems will be studied. 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 requirement phase through the preliminary and critical design phase, manufacturing and testing, implementation, operation and the retirement of the system. The complexity-based risk assessment can be applied to various domains 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 improved methodology can warn the program manager as well as the other stakeholders on assessing the alternative courses of action at each stage in systems lifecycle as well as reduction and management of the complexity content to mitigating some of the technical risk that a system is facing. NPS FOA 16 001 August 12 2016 1
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Dec 16, 2016
- Source ID
- N002441710003
Entities
People
- Roshanak R Nilchiani
Organizations
- Stevens Institute of Technology
- United States Department of Defense