Derived System Requirements Research Articles

Applicability of BIM-IoT-GIS integrated digital twins for post occupancy evaluations

Post Occupancy Evaluations (POE) provided a systematic methodology for determining the performance gap between expected and actual performance. Monitoring quality of the indoor environment is essential for understanding building performance in relation to occupant health, wellbeing, and comfort. Because of the global COVID-19 pandemic, researchers faced numerous issues accessing the building for collecting data and making spot measurements of the indoor environment. Technologies such as Building Information Modeling (BIM), Internet of Things (IoT), and Geographical Information Systems (GIS) have the potential to address existing challenges for data collection, analysis, and visualization in post occupancy evaluations. This study aims to explore the applications of a BIM-IoT-GIS-integrated digital twin for post occupancy evaluations. First, high-level use case scenarios are developed to derive system requirements for a digital twin platform. Second, four tests are conducted that provide a step-by-step procedure for BIM-IoT-GIS integration. Third, the integration is validated by geo-reference checks, data transfer checks, and visual checks. Based on the tests, a streamlined workflow is recommended for similar/future projects. The results demonstrate that Revit-ArcGIS Pro integration meets the system requirements for post occupancy evaluations. Moreover, as shown in the graphical abstract (Figure), the spatial-temporal capabilities of ArcGIS Pro enable continuous monitoring and visualization of building performance in 4D. In conclusion, BIM-IoT-GIS integration can provide a solid foundation for developing a centralized digital twin for post occupancy evaluations and enables researcher to collect and analyze the data without being physically present in the building.

Towards Multimodal Information Systems for Assisting Humans in Production and Logistics Processes

Information support systems for coping with and mastering increasing process complexity are becoming a success factor for many companies. The information systems available today are predominantly implemented as mobile applications and, as the range of functions grows, place increasingly high demands on the user interface. To reduce the cognitive load, these are tailored to the user and are limited in functionality or require special training, which is costly and impractical for some user groups. Current voice interaction interfaces offer advantages in this context, but the communication of data to the user can be done more meaningfully and clearly in graphical or multimodal form. Furthermore, both interaction modes neglect essential sources of information in industrial and logistics use cases, such as available information about documents and physical properties of objects. Methodologically, this contribution proceeds as follows: First, a literature review was conducted on Cognitive Load Theory, Human-Computer Interaction, Social Response Theory, and the cooperative principle of conversation with a focus on human-machine interaction. Subsequently, expert interviews on relevant application areas in the field of production and logistics were conducted in order to identify use cases and derive system requirements. Based on the findings, a concept for an stationary adaptive multimodal information system was developed, which, to our knowledge, does not exist yet due to the combination of a 2D/3D scanner and conversational intelligence and can be used to improve human-machine interaction in the context of Industry 5.0.

The Operational Environment Exchange Network: Modeling a Complex Environment for Resilient System Design

The operational environment (OE) for the United States (US) Army is becoming increasingly complex, requiring systems engineers and architects to develop new approaches for managing the variability inherent in the OEs of today and tomorrow. In response to this growing capability gap, the US Department of Defense (DoD) established the engineered resilient systems (ERS) program. A core property of ERS is broad utility—the ability of a system to “perform effectively in a wide range of operations across multiple futures despite experiencing disruptions.” This article discusses research intended to provide system designers with a model that visualizes the complex interactions between the variables of the OE in order to derive system requirements that ensure a system exhibits broad utility. Specifically, this article 1) identifies three gaps in current US DoD doctrine impacting the ability to design technical systems for broad utility, 2) proposes an integrated network model—the operational environment exchange network (OEEN)—that specifies how the variables of the OE, exogenous to the technical systems employed by the US Army soldiers, can impact the system's broad utility, and 3) employs an established requirements writing format to demonstrate how to write broad utility system requirements. By addressing these objectives, system designers can better visualize the complex, multilayered nature of the OE with the hope of designing systems that remain effective in the face of changing external conditions. This article demonstrates how the OEEN can assist system designers in the development of broad utility system requirements that mitigate the disruptions the system might face, ensuring the system remains effective, despite changing conditions.

Model-Based Systems Engineering for System Safety: An Introduction

Model-based systems engineering (MBSE) has gained momentum as the predominant method of analyzing and deriving system requirements, as well as of verifying and validating system performance. Over the years, several frameworks have gained prominence as approved methods and formal techniques to model systems. MBSE technology continues to gain popularity within the systems engineering domain, especially in markets of complex systems. To remain relevant within the context of concurrent engineering, it is advantageous for system safety engineers to learn how these techniques are affecting system design so that safety is addressed within system development. This paper provides an overview of MBSE in theory and practice, and provides high-level details on how the system safety engineer can use these methods for optimum impact in affecting safety design.

Understanding IoT Systems: A Life Cycle Approach

Internet of Things (IoT) systems and the corresponding network architectures are complex due to distributed services on many IoT devices collaboratively fulfilling common goals of IoT applications. System requirements for different types of IoT application domains are still not well-established. The life cycle view is one of the views used for system architecting, showing different stakeholders’ concerns at every stage of the life cycle to derive system requirements. We employ the life cycle view to understand IoT systems in different IoT application domains. Our contribution is the definition of a generic life cycle model for IoT, which is specified by observations on life cycles of existing IoT solutions and generalizations taking into account important IoT functionalities and quality attributes. Such generic life cycle model for IoT was non-existent.

A Graph Theory Approach to Functional Failure Propagation in Early Complex Cyber‐Physical Systems (CCPSs)

AbstractThis paper presents a framework to quantify failure propagation potential for complex, cyber‐physical systems (CCPSs) during the conceptual stages of design. This method is referred to as the Function Failure Propagation Potential Methodology (FFPPM). This research is motivated by recent trends in engineering design. As systems become increasingly connected, an open area of research for CCPSs is to move reliability and failure assessments earlier in the engineering design process. This allows practitioners to make decisions at a point in the design process where the decision has a high impact and a low cost. Standard methods are limited by the availability of data and often rely on detailed representations of the system. As such, they have not addressed failure propagation in the functional design prior to selecting candidate architectures. To develop the metrics, graph theory is used to model and quantify the connectedness of the functional block diagram (FBD). These metrics quantify (1) the summation of the reachability matrix and (2) the summation of the number of paths between nodes (functions within system models) i and j for all i and j. From a practical standpoint, these metrics quantify the reachability between functions in the graph and the number of paths between functions defines the failure propagation potential of that failure. The unique contribution of this research is to quantify failure propagation potential during conceptual design prior to selecting candidate architectures. The goal of these metrics is to produce derived system requirements, based on an analysis, that focus on minimizing the impact of failures.

Alternatives for Navigating Small Unmanned Air Vehicles without GPS

Considering the increased reliance on GPS navigation for the Army’s Unmanned Aircraft Systems, adversaries have invested in capabilities to deny our systems access to genuine GPS signals. Although significant effort has been put forth in the areas of anti-jamming and anti-spoofing in GPS receivers, a need for alternative navigation methods in a GPS denied environment has grown in importance. This report outlines the recommendation and analysis completed for Mr. Lars Ericsson of the Army Project Manager Unmanned Aircraft Systems (PM-UAS). The report includes background research in the domain space, comprehensive stakeholder analysis, derived system requirements and functional requirements, ending with alternative generation, value scoring, costing, and provided findings for a recommended alternative for future consideration.

Feasibility of Using Synthetic Aperture Radar to Aid UAV Navigation.

This study explores the potential of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) to aid Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) navigation when Inertial Navigation System (INS) measurements are not accurate enough to eliminate drifts from a planned trajectory. This problem can affect medium-altitude long-endurance (MALE) UAV class, which permits heavy and wide payloads (as required by SAR) and flights for thousands of kilometres accumulating large drifts. The basic idea is to infer position and attitude of an aerial platform by inspecting both amplitude and phase of SAR images acquired onboard. For the amplitude-based approach, the system navigation corrections are obtained by matching the actual coordinates of ground landmarks with those automatically extracted from the SAR image. When the use of SAR amplitude is unfeasible, the phase content can be exploited through SAR interferometry by using a reference Digital Terrain Model (DTM). A feasibility analysis was carried out to derive system requirements by exploring both radiometric and geometric parameters of the acquisition setting. We showed that MALE UAV, specific commercial navigation sensors and SAR systems, typical landmark position accuracy and classes, and available DTMs lead to estimate UAV coordinates with errors bounded within ±12 m, thus making feasible the proposed SAR-based backup system.

Requirements engineering and Business/IT alignment: Lessons Learned

This paper presents a review on the Business/IT alignment with the goal of exploring how requirements engineering can help model business environment and how business environment can help perform requirements engineering tasks in order to develop a system which meets business expectations. It discusses ten lessons learned from the Business/IT alignment research area in the context of requirements engineering (RE). It is intended to be useful to researchers and graduate students who consider doing research into alignment using requirements engineering approaches, and also to requirements engineers who are interested in deriving system requirements from business environment. Challenges to the value of alignment research, the role of requirements engineering research in alignment, and recommendations for RE researchers in order to highlight future RE research directions in Business/IT alignment domain are also presented.

Cognitive control channels: from concept to identification of implementation options

Recent effort related to cognitive radio systems has lead to an in-depth analysis of context information management and exploitation based on a cognitive control channel for enhancement of management needed for, say, suitable link selection in a heterogeneous radio framework, dynamic radio resource management, and distributed sensing. Concerning the actual implementation of such a CCC, the focus was recently moved toward an in-band solution, where the information is transported building on existing radio access technologies. In this scope, this article illustrates relevant technical scenarios in which CCCs can be exploited and outlines a set of derived system requirements. The article provides an overview of various possible RAT independent and dependent implementation options, such as Diameter, distributed agents, 3GPP radio resource control (RRC) mechanisms, IEEE 802.21, IEEE 802.11, WiMedia UWB, and Bluetooth. The advantages and drawbacks of the various options are discussed.

Development of the six‐legged walking and climbing robot SpaceClimber

AbstractIn this article, we present SpaceClimber,1 a six‐legged, bio‐inspired, energy‐efficient and adaptable free‐climbing robot for mobility on steep gradients. The long‐term stool is to provide a system for extraterrestrial surface exploration missions, paying special attention to mobility in lunar craters to retrieve or analyze scientific samples from the interior of these craters. We present an envisaged mission for SpaceClimber and summarize the deriving system requirements. The robot's morphology determination procedure is depicted, considering the predefined demands and utilizing a simulation environment in combination with evolutionary optimization strategies, followed by a detailed description of the system's hardware design. The theoretical concept for the control of such machines with an extensive sensory–motor configuration is explained, as well as the implemented locomotion control approach and attempts to optimize the behavior of the robot using machine learning techniques. In addition, the experimental plant that was built for testing and evaluating the performance of the developed system in an environment as realistic as possible is introduced, followed by a description of the experiments performed. Concluding, we summarize the results and experiences and give an outlook on further developments. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Human‐information interaction in time‐critical settings: Information needs and use in the emergency room

AbstractTrauma centers are stressful, noisy, and dynamic places, with many people performing complex tasks, and with no technological aids to support their operations. This paper describes research that uses an emergency room as a natural laboratory for investigating information behavior and information sources of trauma team members. Data from interviews, focus groups, and videotaped trauma resuscitations revealed specific information needs in four distinct phases of a trauma event. The most commonly utilized information sources include the patient, vital signs monitor, x‐rays images, and other team members. Additionally, data indicated inefficiencies in teamwork and communication. Results from this study can be used to derive system requirements for the design of decision and communication support systems for trauma teams.

A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK FOR A CUSTOMER‐CENTERED SYSTEM DEVELOPMENT LIFECYCLE MODEL

AbstractThis paper is divided into two parts. The first contains a survey of various system development lifecycle models, including the Waterfall, Spiral, and Evolutionary Models. The second part introduces a conceptual framework for a new approach to complex, large‐scale system developments based upon a customer focus throughout the system development lifecycle. This customer‐focused approach utilizes automated Concept of Operations (CONOPS) and group dynamics techniques to allow greater understanding of end‐user ‘actual’ needs by system designers via more productive interactions. This approach is based on the development and use of detailed user objectives and critical success factors prior to and separate from their mapping into basic and derived system requirements. It provides a means for capturing previously obscure requirements within the user environment and mindset.

IRIS: Going commercial with high-tech European LEO microsatellites

IRIS is a low-cost commercial messaging service project based on LEO microsatellites. Despite their small size, the satellites will pack a sophisticated CDMA on-board processing payload. Direct-sequence spreadspectrum provides distinct advantages in terms of access efficiency, localization and operation in a crowded radio spectrum environment. This paper starts with discussing market potential and deriving system requirements. It goes on to present the engineering trade-offs and the solutions adopted at systems, spacecraft and ground segment levels. It concludes with an overview of the current deployment scenario and a projection of future evolution.

THE NEXT GENERATION OF SYSTEMS MODELING AND PROTOTYPING

AbstractThe engineering of large, complex systems is a difficult task. In the increasingly competitive arena of defense contracting, there is a need for easy‐to‐use tools to analyze tasks quickly. A multi‐year project at Boeing uses hierarchical model‐based reasoning and distributed systems to develop tools for early analysis of complex systems. These tools assist the earliest efforts of systems engineers to test alternative concepts, to derive system requirements, to identify potential problems, and to explore key system design issues.The Process Flow modeling tool (pFlow) is a hierarchical, graphics‐based modeling and simulation tool. A Systems Prototyping Environment (SysPro) provides virtual communications, a thread‐based computing paradigm for the UNIXTM operating system, and computer language wrappers to assist engineers in evolving new systems. Moreover, it provides a formalized specification and migration path toward a final system design.