A requirement development and risk reduction environment for major systems applications

This paper reviews the status of a PhD project which aims to create a requirement development and risk reduction environment for major systems applications. The first section of the paper provides an overview of the project and the second discusses the early approaches to the problems involved. The design ideas for the environment are explained and discussed. The four level structure of the environment consists of a system representation, structures to present that information, a modelling and simulation layer and a user interface. It incorporates a flexible tool set that combines a representation of a system´s architecture and requirements with a set of general (and system-specific) modelling, simulation, assessment and presentation options. Although the project is being carried out with a particular emphasis on railway systems, the issues it deals with are much more general and can be applied to any system