An integrated approach to risk assessment for concurrent design

This paper describes an approach to risk assessment and analysis suited to the early phase, concurrent design of a space mission. The approach integrates an agile, multi-user risk collection tool, a more in-depth risk analysis tool, and repositories of risk information. A JPL developed tool, named RAP, is used for collecting expert opinions about risk from designers involved in the concurrent design of a space mission. Another in-house developed risk assessment tool, named DDP, is used for the analysis. The risk model in DDP is generated by integrating the information collected in RAP, other design information available from the design sessions, and possibly risk and failure information available from other libraries and databases. The underlying software infrastructure for this transfer of information is based on translating the RAP data to XML, which in turn is interpreted by DDP and translated to DDP data. The advantage of the integration is its combination of the strengths of the components, while avoiding the need to construct a single monolithic all-encompassing tool and process. We briefly describe each of the RAP and DDP tools and demonstrate the integrated approach with an example generated from a study conducted at the Project Design Center (TeamX) at JPL.