Systems Engineering

This paper presents the sharing of our experiences and lessons learned to modernize a warship with C6ISR utilizing the digital engineering MBSE models of complex systems. We captured Enterprise Architecture (EA) DoDAF views, KPP and KSA in Capability Views (CV). At the EA, information passes into domain specific SoS Block Definition Diagrams (BDD) and Internal Block Diagrams (IBD) to interface and exchange information via SysML models and generate the Interface Control Document (ICD) automatically. The paper illustrates the mapping of EA with SoS digital models and tracing from EA to SoS MOE, MOP, MOS and TPM. The paper applies a Use Case to exemplify OOSEM life cycle activities for requirements traceability. The paper has demonstrated that both EA and SoS are derived from Systems Engineering (SE) process and can be validated and verified via the “V-Model” and endorse the noticeable reduction in the total development cost per complex systems project.

Neurologie pédiatrique (3° Éd.) La pathologie neurologique infantile occupe une place majeure dans la pathologie pédiatrique, en raison de sa fréquence et de la gravité de ses conséquences sur le développement psychomoteur des enfants. La 3e édition de Neurologie ...

There are two major transformations currently occurring that significantly impact acquisition and management of military systems.  Network Enabled Capability (NEC) demands careful consideration of interoperability for delivered systems; new systems must be introduced such that they are interoperable with current systems and legacy systems must be managed (upgraded, modified etc.) such that interoperability is maintained and, preferably, enhanced.  Eventually, NEC considerations should become ‘business as usual’, but for the time being special consideration is needed.  The second transformation is the introduction of the concept of Through Life Capability Management (TLCM).  Although new systems have always been planned with consideration of their maintenance etc., TLCM has a wider scope.  It requires consideration not only of the individual systems’ life cycles, but of the management of the super system in which new systems will operate.  The whole life costs, risks, and development must be considered by systems designers and owners.
These transformations are linked; interoperability is a key requirement of TLCM. Through a concept mapping of TLCM, Yue & Henshaw (1) have shown that TLCM implies a need for new approaches (new thinking) in defence systems design and acquisition.  Also TLCM requires the defence supply chain (industry) to have a changed engagement in the delivery and management of systems.  This, in turn, requires changes to the industry-customer relationship, such that new approaches to collaboration are a vital ingredient necessary for adherence to TLCM principles.
The NECTISE (Network Enabled Capability Through Innovative Systems Engineering: www.nectise.com) programme was a large academic-industry research programme (part sponsored by industry) to investigate the implications for systems engineering arising from NEC and TLCM considerations.  The programme included ten UK universities, and industry technologists and systems engineers from land, sea, air, and C4I domains.
NECTISE considered systems processes and approaches from all parts of the capability management process (planning, design, change, and realisation in military operations).  A number of new tools and processes were developed and an important part of the programme was to demonstrate these in context and together.  This demonstration was achieved through development of a scenario that considered the full systems acquisition and management process.  By linking a set of vignettes with different timeframes it was possible to track an exemplar system through the planning to realisation and use stages.  The scenario development drew heavily on the TTCP GUIDEx approach to defence experimentation; this enabled effective multi-disciplinary collaboration and integration of many different research threads.
This paper will describe the scenario planning activity and outcome and illustrate the manner in which linked research outputs were integrated into a systems engineering demonstration.  The importance of systems architecting, both to the demonstration and (more importantly) as a key underpinning skill for TLCM and NEC will be emphasised.
The approach taken in this demonstration of research has implications for the approaches that should be taken for defence procurement decision making in a TLCM and NEC characterised acquisition environment.  These are described and the implications of TLCM for decision making is also highlighted.

Product-Service Systems, like all complex systems, are vulnerable to unpredictable environmental changes that can seriously undermine their ability to continuously deliver value to customers. The long-term consequences of volatile markets, unanticipated technologies, and unpredictable changes in society must be captured, modeled and communicated to decision makers since the earliest stages of the design, so to identify sustainable PSS solutions able to deliver value for years or decades to come. The paper analyses the problem of PSS changeability from the perspective of established medium-large product manufacturers facing the transition toward result-oriented PSS offers. Building on established literature in the systems engineering field, the paper proposes the definition of the changeability criteria, also named 'ilities', that are relevant to consider for PSS engineers in the early stages of design. Furthermore, the paper describes a systematic framework for assessing ilities in early PSS design, elaborating on technological enablers for ilities modeling.

One of the major unintended consequences of Acquisition Reform efforts during the 1990s was a reduction in rigor of sustainment planning and effectiveness throughout materiel development programs. As the evidence of this problem mounted over the past decade, the Department of Defense (DoD) initiated efforts to rejuvenate sustainment planning during the early phases of program development. This article provides brief descriptions of the actions that have been taken, or that are being planned, to achieve this goal.

Psychological factors are the root causes of many disasters but are underemphasized in the systems engineering literature. The tacit premise is that decision makers are rational, that is, they will make decisions based on facts. Cognitive Bias is the Root Cause of Irrational Decisions. In psychology the phenomenon that causes irrational decisions is called cognitive bias, which is a “mistake in reasoning, evaluating, remembering, or other cognitive process, often occurring as a result of holding onto one's preferences and beliefs regardless of contrary information.” Irrational decisions can be made by executives, designers, and operators.

This report investigates the current approaches to Concept of Operations (CONOPS) development in use in various DoD and commercial organizations with the goal of understanding why CONOPS creation is such a lengthy process, and how the process can be made more agile. A number of CONOPS are cataloged and analyzed to understand which parts of the current standards are used by the creators of a CONOPS. Traditional CONOPS creation processes are discussed based on literature and face-toface interviews with those involved with creating CONOPS in both traditional and nontraditional domains. Based on these findings, an agile CONOPS process that emphasizes stakeholder involvement and expedites shared mental models development is put forth. Additionally, current and emerging technologies that might be applicable to creating a graphical CONOPS are discussed. Finally, recommendations for future research to develop a toolbox for creating graphical CONOPS are presented.

We introduce and investigate a natural extension of Dung's well-known model of argument systems in which attacks are associated with a weight, indicating the relative strength of the attack. A key concept in our framework is the notion of an inconsistency budget, which characterises how much inconsistency we are prepared to tolerate: given an inconsistency budget β, we would be prepared to disregard attacks up to a total weight of β. The key advantage of this approach is that it permits a much finer grained level of analysis of argument systems than unweighted systems, and gives useful solutions when conventional (unweighted) argument systems have none. We begin by reviewing Dung's abstract argument systems, and motivating weights on attacks (as opposed to the alternative possibility, which is to attach weights to arguments). We then present the framework of weighted argument systems. We investigate solutions for weighted argument systems and the complexity of computing such solutions, focussing in particular on weighted variations of grounded extensions. Finally, we relate our work to the most relevant examples of argumentation frameworks that incorporate strengths. 

This paper describes the development of a generalized agent -based simulation tool for studying manpower and personnel management behaviors. The subject matter of the simulation are complex organizational behaviors found within Uni ted States Navy Manpower and Personnel processes. Behavior of such a complex system is typically associated with a hierarchi- cal structure in which the lowest level agents are

A team was assembled to examine the
change approval process using the theory of
constraints (TOC). The premise of the theory of
constraints is that the performance of a system, in this
case the change approval process, is constrained in
the ability to achieve throughput at key points in the
process. It was perceived that improvements could be
made in the change approval process, the main
characteristic of which was an excessive time from
the documentation of an idea to project approval. The
team identified many areas for improvement and
concluded that a fundamental shift was required from
a focus on a time-consuming effort to minimize the
uncertainty in the project before approval to authorize
development funds to new criteria which would justify
the project's effort in a shorter time. The resulting
actions to modify the process, called the new approval
process (NAP), suggest key aspects of system
engineering (SE).

This study has been undertaken to investigate the speed control ACIM using field oriented control. The principle of vector control of electric drives is based on the control of both the magnitude and the phase of each phase current and voltage. for this purpose, the study of available conventional and non-conventional approaches has been presented. This paper also presents a clear study which illustrates introduction of efficient vector control of ACIM.

This article describes a deep space mission where more forthright information exchanges between teamed but rival agencies could have preserved the original plan as well as saved much time and money. The topic may be of particular interest to those involved in institutional collaborations where there are vested interests in protecting rather than sharing information.

For addition information, refer to the closely related topics of Information Management, Organizing Business and Enterprises to Perform Systems Engineering and Fundamentals of Services.

Students engaged in systems engineering education typically lack experience and understanding of the multidisciplinary complexity of systems engineering projects. Consequently, students struggle to understand the value, rationale, and usefulness of established systems engineering methods, often perceiving them as banal or trivial. The paper presents a learning activity based on a three-stage reverse engineering role-play developed to increase students' awareness of the importance of correctly using systems engineering methods. The activity was developed and integrated in the Systems Engineering course given at Blekinge Institute of Technology. Its effectiveness was analyzed through semistructured self-reflection reports along with two editions of the course. The results showed the development of students' understanding of how to use systems engineering methods. In particular, the students realized the need to deliver detailed and easy-to-read models to the decision makers. This result was in line with the achievement of some of the intended learning outcomes of the course.

Public reporting burden for the collection of information is estimated to average 1 hour per response, including the time for reviewing instructions, searching existing data sources, gathering and maintaining the data needed, and completing and reviewing the collection of information. Send comments regarding this burden estimate or any other aspect of this collection of information, including suggestions for reducing this burden, to Washington Headquarters Services, Directorate for Information Operations and Reports, 1215 Jefferson Davis Highway, Suite 1204, Arlington VA 22202-4302. Respondents should be aware that notwithstanding any other provision of law, no person shall be subject to a penalty for failing to comply with a collection of information if it does not display a currently valid OMB control number.

In military, civil, and commercial systems there exists a need to affordably manage the operational effectiveness of the system of interest through the acquisition and operational stages of its life cycle. Once a system design is baselined and instantiated, then the challenge during development, production, and utilization life cycle stages is to maintain the currency of the physical system baseline to facilitate affordable system support. In essence, the system must adapt to potentially frequent asynchronous obsolescence of its constituent elements, requirements growth (driven by the operational environmental and external constraints such as funding, schedule or risk), and external environment changes. This paper specifically addresses the impact that system element obsolescence has on a system baseline during the various system life cycle phases and provides a framework for affordable system evolution.

— In digital communication system, digital information can be sent on a carrier through changes in its fundamental characteristics such as phase, frequency and amplitude. The use of a filter plays an important part in a communication channel because it is effective at eliminating spectral leakage, reducing channel width, and eliminating interference from adjacent symbols (Inter Symbol Interference) ISI. It describe the developed and dynamic method of designing finite impulse response filter with automatic rapid and less error by an efficient genetic and neural approach. GA and Neural are powerful global optimization algorithm introduced in combinational optimization problems. Here, FIR filter is designed using Genetic, Neural approach by efficient coding schemes. We need to design these filters with some constraints imposed by requirements of the communication system in which we are going to use them. The use of optimization techniques have been proved to be quite useful towards the design of those digital filters with certain specifications. This paper reviews about the uses of optimization systems in digital filter design.

 Abstract— Data Leakage can be referred as the unauthorized transfer of classified information from a computer or data centre to the outside world. Big data is an evolving term that describes any voluminous amount of structured, semi-structured and unstructured data that has the potential to be mined for information. The data loss in such huge massive data sets may cause critical vulnerabilities. In this paper we proposed a novel model in Hadoop master/slave architecture for data leakage prevention with LRA algorithm. The LRA algorithm evaluates the Least Reliable Agent and sends it to the DLA (Data Leakage Avoider). DLA prevents the NameNode from allocating data to these agents.

Bayangkan suatu saat Anda menjabat sebagai pimpinan DJKN. Pada suatu rapat terbatas dengan Menteri Keuangan, Anda mendadak ditanya nilai aset BMN yang dimanfaatkan saat ini, saldo Piutang Negara PSBDT, dan nilai dividen saham BUMN Persero 5 tahun terakhir. Berapa lama waktu yang Anda perlukan untuk menjawab pertanyaan tersebut? Dua jam? Satu jam? Apakah Anda harus menelepon satu-persatu Direktur terkait atau harus memeriksa laporan rinci mengenai masing-masing poin yang ditanyakan? Percayakah Anda bahwa pertanyaan semacam itu dapat dijawab dalam hitungan detik?

Kondisi manajemen data di DJKN saat ini memang masih perlu ditingkatkan. Mayoritas raw data diunggah dari unit operasional melalui pelaporan, itu pun pihak pengelola data memiliki preferensinya masing-masing terkait sumber data dan tata kelolanya. Pengolahan data primer menjadi data sekunder dan summarized data pun cenderung masih paper-based atau dilakukan secara manual sehingga dualisme sumber data maupun kesalahan penyajiannya dalam beberapa kasus masih terjadi. Efek domino dari situasi ini adalah terganggunya proses monitoring akibat minimnya realtime data, rumitnya proses untuk menyajikan data untuk level pimpinan, dispute dalam pengambilan data dari berbagai sumber, dan minimnya data historis untuk pengambilan keputusan serta perencanaan strategis.

Dalam menghadapi kompleksnya situasi ini, opsi yang dapat diambil adalah mengembangkan Decision Support System (DSS) yang salah satu turunannya adalah Executive Information System (EIS). EIS diartikan sebagai sistem yang memberikan akses langsung terhadap informasi yang relevan dan penting bagi pimpinan.

As systems are called on to participate on demand within system-of-systems (SoS), system-of-systems integration (SoSI) has become a key concern. This capability is especially important in defense and aerospace where systems are increasingly required to interoperate on demand to satisfy mission requirements. SoSI is also becoming increasingly important in healthcare and energy domains. SoSI involves interfacing and enabling the interactions of component systems to create the needed SoS capability to accomplish mission or business goals. SoSI, which is part of the overall SoS development life cycle, increases in complexity when there are legacy systems that need to be integrated, and when humans are tasked to perform in various capacities within the SoS. An added layer of complexity is introduced when the SoS has to exhibit certain quality attributes such as adaptability and resilience in the face of contingencies and disruptions in the operational environment. This paper addresses key considerations and challenges in SoSI.

Systems Integration (SI) is an important element of Systems Engineering. It involves the integration of hardware, software, products, services, processes, and humans. The ever-increasing scale of complexity of systems and its impact on the business requires that we revisit the processes involved in the development and integration of a system. This paper proposes a Systems Integration Process Model (SI PM) based on a comprehensive lifecycle view of systems integration. As part of the ongoing SI research at Stevens Institute of Technology, the authors have developed a Systems Integration Framework (SIF) which incorporates the relevant aspects of integration from a lifecycle perspective and sets a foundation to an end-to-end approach to SI. Our end-to-end approach focuses on how integration issues can be addressed up-front to minimize integration related complexities and challenges later on in the system engineering process. This paper discusses the merits and benefits of applying the SI PM to evaluate and improve current SI processes in organizations. The paper provides, in addition to an overview of the SI framework, the activities included in the model. The model was pilot tested to evaluate the SI processes at a government agency. The results were used to provide recommendations for SI process reengineering.

: Qualitative accelerated test methods improve system reliability by identifying and removing initial design flaws. However, schedule and cost constraints often preclude sufficient testing to generate a meaningful reliability estimate from the data obtained in these tests. In this dissertation a modified accelerated life test is proposed to assess the likelihood of attaining a reliability requirement based on tests of early system prototypes. Assuming each prototype contains an unknown number of independent competing failure modes whose respective times to occurrence are governed by a distinct Weibull law, the observed failure data from this qualitative test are shown to follow a poly-Weibull distribution. However, using an agent-based Monte Carlo simulation, it is shown that for typical products subjected to qualitative testing, the failure observations result from a homogenous subset of the total number of latent failure modes and the failure data can be adequately modeled with a ...

The standard MIL-STD-1760 connecter is used to transfer guidance information to weapons. MIL-STD-1760 mission stores include, but are not limited to, the GBU-32 Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAM), the AGM-154 Joint Standoff Weapon (JSOW), and the CBU-103, CBU-104 and CBU-105 Wind Corrected Munitions Dispensers (WCMDs). Learn all about MIL-1760 in an MIL-1760 Training course by Tonex.

Sound plays a huge role in the animal kingdom, and animals rely on sound to acoustically sense their surroundings, communicate, and locate food and predators. Therefore, I decided to use sound and sensors as my main components. I made a low cost, a solar-powered motion sensor that plays specific sounds to alert the hearing senses in animals and manipulate their movement away from farmlands. This device can solve a major problem of the Indian farmer, as it can be easily adapted by every region in the country by changing the sound generated by the ISD1820 device.

— Designing an efficient Distributed Database System (DDBS) is considered as one of the most challenging problems because of multiple interdependent factors which are affecting its performance. Allocation and fragmentation are two processes which their efficiency and correctness influence the performance of DDBS. Therefore, efficient data fragmentation and allocation of fragments across the network sites are considered as an important research area in distributed database design. In this paper presents an approach which simultaneously fragments data vertically and allocates the fragments to appropriate sites across the network. Bond Energy Algorithm (BEA) is applied with a better affinity measure that improves the generated clusters of attributes.

This paper briefly discusses the problem of poor requirements and how, while solutions are known, they are not being transferred from academia to industry. The paper then discusses a project to implement an approach for transferring the solution from academia to industry by using the Blackboard principles of Artificial Intelligence and software Agents to provide a suite of evolving educational tools based on an object-oriented information systems paradigm. The paper then gives an overview of the functionality provided by the tools, some early results and a list of the expected benefits of the project.

This paper describes a system for the investigation of railway interfaces that is under development within the Rail Safety and Standards Board (RSSB). Going through its preliminary stages at the time of writing, the target is to adopt this method as a formal part of the standards development and review process that RSSB manages on behalf of the mainline railway operators in GB. Although the work described in this paper has been and continues to be fully supported by RSSB, any views expressed in this paper are those of the author alone, and should not be interpreted as a statement of policy. Assessing the safety of complex systems is of vital importance to stakeholders in many industry sectors, such as railway transportation, aviation and other industries, where there is a likelihood that accidents can happen. These accidents may result in loss of lives and/or cause damage to property and the environment. This paper presents a proactive approach on how to assess, achieve and maintain safety, integrity and performance of complex systems using a soft systems thinking approach. Causal reasoning of potential accident scenarios in an objective manner requires an irreducible concept, which everyone can agree upon. This is known as a hazard in the case of potential accident scenarios. To identify hazard(s) and reason about them, we need an objective description of the operational system. However, an operational system is a complex system. Complex system(s) are defined as integrated composites of components of people, processes, assets, procedures, rules, and organisations. Causal analysis of a complex system takes the form of a generic methodology and the potential application of this methodology is currently under development at RSSB and its initial results are discussed. The main thesis of the paper is that complex issues of cost, performance, and system safety can be successfully resolved using a process based on a soft systems thinking approach. To use a soft system thinking approach means to focus efforts on static and dynamic interconnections (interfaces) between the elements of a complex system using a framework of tools/techniques of systems engineering, safety engineering and human factors engineering in a bottom-up manner. Traditional systems engineering approaches exclude human aspects and treat humans as actors' external to the system.

The systems approach is the foundation of systems engineering. It is fundamental to systems, systems thinking, systems methodology, systems design, and systems engineering. It is a set of top-level rules from which systems engineering methodologies can be derived.

Problem Management is not recognized as a Systems Engineering process. Unlike risk management, where risks could impact a project at some future date, problems impact the project now. Therefore, a robust Problem Management process should be established (similar to the risk management process described in Chapter 5 of the INCOSE handbook [Hamelin, Walden, and Krueger, INCOSE systems engineering handbook v3.2: Improving the process for SE practitioners, INCOSE, Seattle, WA, 2010]) early in a projects formulation. The process should be continuous throughout all phases of the project life cycle and should be included as a part of the project System Engineering Management Plan. The process should, at a minimum, address: problem identification, problem assessment, problem root cause investigation, problem corrective action planning, reporting, a roll-up of all current problems, problem closure, and a strong interface with the project's knowledge management system. This paper proposes a Problem Management process based on the foundations of risk and opportunity management which could be used by corporations, government agencies, and programs to establish a robust problem management process for use on their projects.

Purpose of the study: The purpose of this research is to extend the review to which CPS implementation as part of the performance management system (PMS) in the fresh produce supply chain (FPSC), can improve performance, especially to reduce inefficiencies, improve services, and provide joint results for all partners. This paper focuses on the possibility of CPS implementation in FPSC, as well as reviewing a holistic understanding of CPS in the FPSC. Methodology: This systematic review was conducted by analyzing selected articles and categorization to identify potentially relevant articles referring to peer-reviewed journals, thesis Ph.D., and proceedings. Using four steps, the first step found 161 articles. The second step obtained 56 articles. The third step, 17 articles were selected as topics of importance. The fourth step was designated to categorize and analyze the 17 articles. Main Findings: Research results show a comprehensive review of the description of the CPS classification model in FPSC by categorizing previous literatures on different collaborative structures and different levels of planning. This paper also shows the relevant solution methods used in each level of planning. A review of the current state of CPS in the FPSC model is conducted by highlighting areas that have not been addressed or gaps in the literature and by suggesting directions for further study. The implication of this study: Intended for CPS in FPSC, by reviewing CPS implementation in FPSC, it can develop and become the basis for seeing the benefits of a collaborative performance system in the field of fresh produce, this field still rarely applied, and it could be further identified what kind of collaboration should be carried out from the existing collaboration structure. Novelty/Originality of this study: This study is considered as our best knowledge to observe the CPS system in the FPSC, which is an attempt to introduce it by exploring and evaluating the values that could be shared among collaborative partners under classification model of a collaborative structure, general characteristic, level collaboration and solution of the method. It also provides information for interested parties in the collaboration of supply chain to improve the performance based on CPS.

 Abstract— Distribution design involves making decisions on the fragmentation and allocation of data across the sites of a computer network. Multiple vertical splitting is the process of subdividing the attributes of a relation to generate fragments. In this paper, we propose an analysis for multiple vertical splitting algorithm using Slop Based Partitioning Algorithm (SBPA). This approach starts from the attribute affinity matrix and generates initial clusters based on the affinity values between attributes. Then, it uses the database according to optimal splitting solution to produce final groups that will represent the fragments. Then we analyzed these fragments according to their contribution level. The result is generated that shows how to find optimal solutions.

L'ingénierie système traite de systèmes artificiels conçus par les êtres humains. Ces systèmes sont des combinaisons d'éléments visant un ou plusieurs buts définis. Un système sociotechnique comprend une partie technique, relevant de l'ingénierie système, et une partie humaine et organisationnelle relevant des sciences humaines et sociales. Enfin, la résilience concerne la capacité d'un système sociotechnique à s'ajuster face à des événements perturbateurs, à s'y adapter et à apprendre les règles d'adaptation adéquates, quand les perturbations sont en dehors du périmètre spécifié des mécanismes d'adaptation du système. Après avoir caractérisé la résilience (caractéristiques de la résilience, migrations et mécanismes de compensation…), l'article met en évidence sa pertinence dans le domaine des systèmes sociotechniques. Ensuite, la résilience des systèmes sociotechniques est articulée à l'ingénierie système afin de faire évoluer les processus d'ingénierie système, les modèles d'ingénierie, les architectures du système à élaborer et des systèmes contributeurs. Enfin, l'article souligne le fait que l'ingénierie système est nécessaire et doit être complétée de bonnes pratiques de management qui contribuent à la résilience des systèmes sociotechniques.

— Thermo-physical properties of butter, hydrogenated fat, palm oil, coconut oil, sunflower oil, and groundnut oil were examined. Experimental results revealed the highest slip melting point (38oC) and specific gravity for hydrogenated fat whereas the lowest slip melting point (-18oC) and hardness values for sunflower oil. However, sunflower oil showed the highest refractive index. The consistency of butter and hydrogenated fat was reported acceptable plastic and spreadable. Palm oil was found soft and spreadable. The melting curve of palm oil, butter, and hydrogenated fat showed two endothermic peaks. However, coconut oil, sunflower oil, and groundnut oil showed only one peak. The solid fat content (SFC) of butter, hydrogenated fat, palm oil, and coconut oil were found within the recommended range for baking performance. Melting enthalpy was strongly correlated to hardness (r = 0.8604, P < 0.001) of fat and oil samples. Correlation coefficient (r) of 0.8977 (P < 0.001) was found between SFC and hardness. The results strengthen the premise that hardness of the fat is not dependent solely on the SFC and as the results demonstrated that the melting enthalpy also plays a key role in influencing the hardness of fats and oils.

We examine the use of real options valuation in the context of prioritizing advanced technologies for NASA funding. Further, we offer a set of computational procedures that quantifies the option value of each technology. Other researchers have applied a real options framework to private sector investments. In the case of NASA investments in advanced technologies, the underlying products, which must be used to justify the investments, are space-related scientific results and discoveries from completed missions to be shared worldwide. As in the private sector, uncertainty plays a significant role in the motivation to use real options in NASA. Uncertainty in NASA technology investments can be classified as development risk and programmatic risk (whether missions using the technology will actually fly). The latter might be called the technology's "market risk." We carried out the approach on a number of planetary exploration technologies. We illustrate the detailed calculations using one of them-lightweight propellant tank technology.

Information overload is a new challenge in e-commerce sites. The problem refers to the fast growing of information that lead following the information flow in real world be impossible. Recommender systems, as the most successful application of information filtering, help users to find items of their interest from huge datasets. Collaborative filtering, as the most successful technique for recommendation, utilises social behaviours of users to detect their interests. Traditional challenges of Collaborative filtering, such as cold start, sparcity problem, accuracy and malicious attacks, derived researchers to use new metadata to improve accuracy of recommenders and solve the traditional problems. Trust based recommender systems focus on trustworthy value on relation among users to make more reliable and accurate recommends. In this paper our focus is on trust based approach and discuss about the process of making recommendation in these method. Furthermore, we review different proposed trust metrics, as the most important step in this process.

Many large and complex systems have extended operational lives. Examples of such systems include the oil and gas drilling systems, defense systems, and air traffic control systems. A growing concern for many users is the difference between actual and intended system performance during the operational life. An understanding of the root causes of that gap, known as performance capability gap, is required if appropriate measures are to be taken. This paper explores the main reasons for the existence of the performance capability gap and suggests the combination of performance-based logistics and technology refreshment programs as a very effective and efficient remedial strategy. The paper examines the Spanish F-100 frigate to illustrate actual application of these strategies. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Syst Eng 15:

This paper reviews the discussions of work by teams of professional engineers, and some very closely related issues, in the INCOSE Annual Symposia to date. The purpose of this work is to identify the issues associated with teamwork among groups of professional engineers and the strategies to address the issues with negative effects. The publications are found to address the issues at two distinct levels, the macro of how teams should operate and the overall performance of team structures, and the micro, concerning the inner functioning of the teams, and the issues associated with the human character of the participants. The majority of the literature reviewed addresses the macro level, with only a few papers about the micro dimensions of teamwork.

The paper guides the reader through a commentary of Singapore’s development in its early stages, and how it balanced development with income equality. It then moves to the modern times, which informs the reader that Singapore of today relies on government schemes to achieve greater equality. However, there are still certain imbalances that exist and cannot be made up with just funds such as ComCare, and bursaries by the government. Furthermore, for a developed Singapore, it needs to provide for the social disadvantage of poor kids in order to push for innovation to drive economic growth of the future.
Later, the paper discusses, Singapore’s social policies and how the state manages to provide assistance to citizens in all income quantiles. Some of the assistance schemes available for children are also listed. Using the Household Survey 2012/ 13, the characteristics of the lower income quantile Singaporeans are taken into consideration. The housing policy for the needy is then taken as a case point, and the options for the needy who cannot afford a house are explained.
An ethnographic study is then conducted of areas under the Public Rental Scheme in Lengkok Bahru, and Henderson Heights. This is followed by the paper’s focus moving towards children in those neighbourhoods. Specifically, looking at the various influences in their lives that influence their academic achievement in terms of grades. Using a Systems Dynamic approach, key areas of intervention are then detailed and validated using surveys and literature review.
Areas on intervention are then highlighted to work in tandem with government schemes so as to correct the social disadvantage facing children. Firstly, is the need for continued presence on the ground so as to deliver a more structured environment to the children in the form of enrichment programmes, and expanding the interest in CCA’s for the children. Secondly, is the focus on maternal education due to its importance in the upbringing of the child. Attention, could be paid to the efforts of Early Childhood Development Agency and the Continuing Education and Training programmes to reinforce the importance of upbringing of the child.

: The United States Air Force and many of its Coalition partners have extended the original service life of some of their aging aircraft due to fiscal constraints. This life extension often requires increased periodic and in-depth inspections; increasing maintenance costs and resulting in longer periods of aircraft downtime. A structural health monitoring system for aging aircraft could reduce the current inspection burden, and thus decrease costs and system downtime. This presentation describes a baseline systems engineering methodology for system definition of an aging aircraft structural health monitoring system. Analysis was performed to quantify the potential benefit a structural health monitoring affords.