Stephen C. Cook

• MSc, PhD
• Systems Engineer at University of South Australia

The assessment of performance and quality is essential to the engineering and evolution of Systems of Systems (SoS); however, there has been limited discussion of SoS measurement and evaluation in the literature. This paper reviews the measurement and assessment literature across multiple disciplines to address this gap and applies constructive res...

Using an extensive review of Systems of Systems Engineering (SoSE) that was published in 2012 as the baseline, this paper reviews the subsequent trends in the development of SoSE theoretical fundamentals and methodologies. The paper shows that many significant gaps identified within the baseline have been addressed. Considerable advances to the und...

This paper is concerned with codifying the principles for successful system of systems engineering (SoSE) practice. The purpose of the codification is manifold but the initial focus is to support the design and utilization of system of systems engineering (SoSE) methodologies. The paper opens with a description of the problem context, defence capab...

The Australian Defence Force currently uses three separate technical regulatory frameworks, one for each of the services. These are each concerned with accepting materiel – Land, Aerospace or Naval – into Australian Service. These technical regulatory frameworks use similar terminology and conceptually are based upon a similar model of design assur...

This paper is concerned with the principles for successful System of Systems Engineering practice and their use. The paper opens with a description of the need for System-of-Systems Engineering (SoSE) within the Australian Defense context and the research underway to support its introduction. An overview of previous work by the authors follows desc...

For some classes of software-intensive systems, especially long life-cycle embedded systems with evolving requirements, the customer needs some margin of reserve data processing capacity in the delivered system. This is typically needed to assure system responsiveness and stability under transient loading conditions and to provide for future softwa...

This paper arose from the challenges inherent in defining and specifying the complicated, non-functional system characteristic of resilience in the presence of competing definitions. The approach adopted is to specify the resilience of a system using a state-machine. In this class of model, the state of the system is modelled by the states, the thr...

System resilience means different things to different people and different things across different industries and system contexts. For example, in some contexts, the need is for the system performance to be unaffected after the occurrence of a defined threat event whereas in others system impairment or even loss may be acceptable, particularly for...

One of the key impediments to the expansion of Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) practice across the lifecycle, particularly in competitive tendering environments, is the continued reliance on documents to define the contractual interface between the acquirer and the supplier. This paper describes the collaborative research project between the...

Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) practices have been gathering momentum for over 20 years and are seen as the future of systems engineering. MBSE formalises the practice of systems engineering through the use of models and its aim is to overcome the limitations inherent in describing complex systems and their development and sustainment using...

Context Software engineering organizations routinely define and implement processes to support, guide and control project execution. An assumption underlying this process-centric approach to business improvement is that the quality of the process will influence the quality, cost and time-to-release of the software produced. A critical question thus...

This case study describes the initial phase of the development of a systems framework to enhance the pre-existing planning processes in a medium-sized defence department. The paper takes the form of a case study that describes the problem context, the transformation being sought, and the approach employed to win over the key stakeholders to the ide...

This paper describes the evolution of a framework suitable for categorizing and displaying systems engineering (SE) research topics. The paper follows the journey traversed in the evolution of the framework and its progressive evaluation. It also provides the key influences and the rationale for each iteration. The framework was synthesised and ref...

Models and simulations have always played an important role in engineering and systems engineering. Physical scale models, full-sized models, and computer models are commonly used in all forms of engineering and design. In recent times, interest in modelling has increased to span the full system lifecycle and there has been a significant focus on M...

The successful realization of the goal of Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) practice, to contain all project information in models, is predicated on the ability of the system model to represent the information needs of a broad range of stakeholders such as the owners, acquirers, suppliers, maintainers, and users. The paper opens by discussing...

Data association (DA) in highly sensitive electronic support (ES) systems is nontrivial when closely-spaced, low probability-of-intercept (LPI) emitters, in cluttered radio-frequency (RF) environments, are sought. A practical processing framework for these situations is presented in this paper.Joint probabilistic data association (JPDA) is used to...

Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) is an emerging practice that provides major advantages over document-based engineering design approaches: traceability and transparency of the evolving design, improved design completeness, and improved knowledge sharing. The paper opens with an introduction to contemporary systems engineering practice, its li...

The C4ISR Architecture Framework [C4ISRAF, 1997] is becoming increasingly prominent in Western defence circles. While the C4ISRAF has many positive attributes, it is sometimes used beyond its intended purpose. This paper briefly describes seven other organizational analysis approaches and compares them against C4ISRAF in order to uncover the relati...

Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) involves a focal shift from document-centric to model-centric systems engineering practices in which the model becomes the primary systems engineering artifact to represent the system specification and design. For an organization, early adoption of new approaches such as MBSE requires careful consideration of...

This paper focuses on the characterization of vehicle mobility in vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs). The performance of vehicle mobility in terms of link available time and the number of inter-vehicle link changes for maintaining active links in VANET is analyzed using both the handover and random moving models. The theoretical analysis is verifie...

Explore the possible transformation of system engineering from a document-centric culture/ old school system engineering thinking to a model-centric culture/ information mgt thinking perspectives - and all the hurdles, hijinks, hysteria, and hype that we'll encounter along the way.

This paper presents the Systems Integration Sandpit (SIS) established by the Defence Science and Technology Organisation and University of South Australia. The paper commences by describing the first two stages of the SIS development and early achievements against the facility's primary goals: exploring systems integration issues, the formation of...

This paper describes the Microcosm program established by DSTO and UniSA to research and to promote good systems engineering and systems integration practice. The initial focus of the Microcosm project is research into the application of Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) in complex systems engineering and systems integration programs. The pape...

This paper describes a joint project that is being undertaken by the University of South Australia and the Defence Science and Technology Organisation to construct a laboratory-based capability to support teaching and research into systems engineering and systems evolution using a model-based systems integration approach. The paper opens with a des...

This paper critiques a previous attempt at methodology selection for R&D environments, and on the basis of the findings of this critique proposes the development of a multi-stream meta-methodology to apply systems engineering to the development of software intensive systems in R&D environments. This methodology is intended to provide expert support...

This paper describes the Microcosm programme established by the Defence Science and Technology Organisation and University of South Australia that seeks to provide a facility to explore systems integration issues, accelerate the formation of systems engineering competencies, and conduct research into model-based systems engineering. Firstly, the pa...

The teaching of the systems engineering process is made problematic due to the enormity of experience required of a practising systems engineer. A ‘gentle’ project-based introduction to systems engineering practice is currently being investigated under the Microcosm programme. The Microcosm programme integrates a robotics-based system-of-systems, a...

Given the importance of key requirements documents such as the function and performance specification to the outcome of a systems engineering project, it is important to ensure that a system's requirements are captured and managed well. While contemporary requirements engineering tools are effective at the latter, they offer little assistance in pr...

It is well recognised that that there is a correlation between process maturity in large organisations and project success. In response to this, a number of process models and standards have been developed for the large-project environment. The Australian defence industry, unlike many overseas countries, relies to a much greater extent on small and...

The engineering discipline of systems engineering was developed as means to address the design, implementation and operation of large, complex technical systems. Whilst systems engineering includes methods for addressing the whole life-cycle of the end product system, and processes for determining what should be made, it still reflects many aspects...

It has been widely recognised that to meet the challenges of developing Command and Control (C2) capability in the networked era, a rigorous design approach needs to be taken. The mandates of US DoD Architecture Framework (DoDAF) and its Australian variant – the Defence Architecture Framework (DAF) are the reflection of this trend. However, these f...

Large-scale systems, such as rail networks, air traffic control systems, and networked defence systems are vital to national well-being. However, modern systems are becoming increasingly complex in nature and their development is proving problematical both in Australia and around the World. The paper opens by describing the nature of the problem an...

In this paper we present a Bayesian belief network (BBN) socio-technical model for investigating the accident rate for multi-crew civil airline aircraft. The model emphasises the influence of airline policy and societal behaviour patterns on the pilots within the piloting system. The main claim of this paper is that a BBN can be used to bring most...

This paper discusses the need for the development of a theoretical framework for Systems Engineering to facilitate recognition of Systems Engineering as a discipline and to provide a fundamental basis for advancing the practice of Systems Engineering. Systems Engineering concerns the development of systems that satisfy the real needs of those who c...

The nature of problems encountered in the system engineering domain has over the past thirty years grown in complexity. The integration of technology with human activity systems to produce complex capabilities has required a continual change in our definition and application of systems engineering. This paper examines the typology of problems assoc...

First Page of the Article

The Defence Procurement Review commissioned by the Australian Government in 2003 suggested sweeping changes to Defence Department structures, policies, processes and procedures for the acquisition of military capabilities and suggested the inclusion of 'rigorous analysis of technology' by the Defence Science and Technology Organisation(DSTO). The f...

This paper discusses experiences in crafting postgraduate degrees for industry and government in the USA and Australia. The paper discusses the needs, delivery formats and curricula, concluding with a summary of the lessons learned.

The Australian defence organisation is facing unprecedented challenges in dealing with changing strategic circumstances, the impact of the network-centric warfare, and the increasing cost and complexity of military materiel. The response to these challenges is to seek more structured approaches in defence strategic planning, capability development,...

This paper provides an overview of a number of research areas that include investigating the nature of systems engineering and its underlying concepts, defining the properties of object-oriented requirements, producing prototype object-oriented tools for systems engineering, and applying of systems engineering to various domains.

While the need for good requirements is well understood, and there many sources that describe what constitutes a set of good requirements, poor requirements continue to plague projects. In recent years tools have become available to assist in requirements management and their rapid adoption throughout industry attests to their efficacy in data hand...

While the problem of poor requirements engineering and management has been documented since the dawn of systems engineering the continual documentation and discussion of the problem require- ments has not resulted in a practical solution to the problem. This paper discusses applying the Blackboard methodology used in Artificial Intelligence to the...

Requirements engineering is crucial to the success of the system engineering process. Unfortunately, while current generation tools provide good support to requirements capture, they offer only modest assistance for cognitive tasks such as requirements assessment. This paper opens by introducing the attributes needed to define a requirement and the...

The very high cost of developing software has encouraged the use of Commercial-Off- The-Shelf (COTS) components to realize complex systems. However this approach is not without problems, because the needs of a complex system are often different from the design imperatives of COTS components. Thus, integration of COTS components is problematical. Th...

The Defence Architecture Framework (DAF), derived from the US C4ISR Architecture Framework (C4ISRAF), mandates the architecture products that are needed to describe the Defence Information Environment and hence the Land Command and Control (C2) Architecture. However, in common with its progenitor, the DAF does not describe a methodology for creatin...

This paper contains a case study describ-ing the development of a software tool to prove a con-cept for use in design to inventory scenarios. The tool was developed by Master's students at the University of South Australia. The case study, designed as a reference for similar activities in other academic institutions, con-tains a list of lessons lea...

Partitioning national Defence into portfolios, where key capabilities and activities are appropriately aggregated together, has been suggested as an effective way to manage national Defence. This paper examines in detail the application of a heuristic approach to achieve this, assessing the efficacy of various ways of partitioning national Defence...

Today's requirements engineering processes do not have very effective checks to ensure that system requirements are feasible. This paper describes extending the use of Requirements Engineering tools to assist the writers of requirements to only accept requirements that are feasible using the FBRET approach (Cook et al. 2001). The approach is illust...

The System Engineering Design Methodologies (SEDM) project is concerned with potential avenues to exploit the AP-233 system engineering data exchange standard. The project is a joint venture between the System Engineering and Evaluation Centre of the University of South Australia and BAE SYSTEMS Australia. The work described in this paper covers th...

This paper proposes a new generation Computer Enhanced Systems Engineering (CESE) tool known as an Operations Concept Harbinger (OCH). The OCH is the result of the applic ation of information management technology to solving the problem of poorly implemented re-quirements engineering, in particular poorly written and articulated requirements as wel...

The current, rapidly changing technical, financial, national security and societal environment presents many challenges to those entrusted to develop and maintain national defence capability. It has become increasing obvious over recent years that the classical methods of undertaking these tasks have been found wanting around the world. This paper...

Joint Forces are anticipated to play an increasingly important role in the Australian Defence Organisation. This paper provides a way of thinking about Joint Forces intended to support activities such as Joint Force capability planning and management. The central approach is that of systems thinking. This approach is applied to develop a set of cor...

In this paper we examine the term “Systems of Systems” (SoS) and form a distinction between them and large monolithic systems based on system attributes and acquisition approaches. Importantly, for this paper, one of the distinguishing attributes is that SoS are formed from component systems that are acquired using multiple asynchronous projects. W...

This paper examines the literature to identify the lessons that have been learned from a selection of the thousands of projects that have been conducted over the last 15 years or so. The first purpose of this review is to establish a value-for-money argument for the application of systems engineering. The review is also intended to provide guidance...

This paper endeavours to identify systems methodology that could prove useful in the creation and operation of military systems-of-systems. The paper opens with a review of basic systems thinking and proposes a military systems hierarchy that is useful in characterising military systems on the basis of their behaviour and the relevant disciplines w...

This paper describes the application of novel systems concepts and methodologies to the design and implementation, or more generally the acquisition, of complex real-time information systems. A hybrid methodology is proposed that combines contemporary ‘soft’ systems thinking with traditional hard systems engineering methodology, to result in an acq...

Specification writing is considered a specialist task which is time consuming, difficult to do well, but vitally important to any organisation which lets contracts for engineering services. As such, specification generation is a worthwhile candidate for computer assistance and results in this area have already been reported. This paper describes a...

The use of comprehensive specifications is established practice in the engineering industry. However, the preparation of these specifications is considered a specialist task requiring a high level of skill together with considerable knowledge and experience, not only of the items under consideration, but also of the specification process. This pape...

Thesis (Ph. D.)--City University, 1990.

Equipment specifications are tools used in the engineering industry to ensure equipment designed and/or supplied matches the requirements of the customer. A computer-aided engineering software package, named Specriter, is being developed to automate the specification compilation process. The progress and future direction of this research is discuss...

The engineering of complex systems is becoming an increasingly important field of study. As a consequence, teaching and research programs are appearing at universities throughout the world. The appearance of these offerings emphasises the need for a coherent and consistent framework that defines the discipline in terms of its Area of concern (A), M...

Poor requirements are often cited as a leading cause of project failures. Preparing a good set of requirements presents challenges at many levels. The approach of the authors is to work from the bottom up by formulating a stylized English grammar that can be used to describe requirements in a more precise way. The grammar was derived from an examin...

This paper presents a brief history of engineering and the emergence of systems engineering as one base of the argument. The paper also discusses the nature of research and discusses the range of research methodologies appropriate for use in systems engineering. The particular position argued in this paper is that engineering design, when performed...

Requirements form the basis of the systems engineering life cycle activities but creating a good set of requirements is a difficult task. Some difficulties can be reduced through the application of a context-free grammar for requirements to reduce the complexity of requirements elicitation. Developing the grammar involved a melding of computer scie...

Within the systems engineering community there is considerable activity in developing support for the users of systems engineering tools who need to exchange data between different tools, in different locations, and across company boundaries. It appears that the bulk of this activity is aimed at minimising the manual work and errors that are curren...

For the purposes of this paper we consider project-specific research software to be software that is produced in a research laboratory for specific purposes to support what in Defence terms are known as capability systems. It is different in character to the production software that is embedded in capability systems in that it is produced in a labo...

The use of COTS software products in Defence is an established fact and there is no provision to return to bespoke legacy systems. The use of COTS software, however, can present problems when designing systems. These problems are diverse and this impacts on the nature of the solution chosen to deal with them. This diversity was highlighted in the N...

This paper identifies and analyses the issues resulting from the integration of Commercial-Off- The-Shelf (COTS) software, developed for personal use, for professional system developments. These issues are examined by comparing the characteristics of the COTS software with the needs of professional environments to ascertain the degree of alignment....

Within Defence research, software components are integrated together for various purposes that often differ from their original design intent. The success of this integration activity relies on two factors: the compatibility of the interfaces between the independent components and salient knowledge about of the component design, its underpinning ar...