AN OBJECT-ORIENTED DESIGN MODEL INCORPORATING UNCERTAINTY FOR EARLY RISK ASSESSMENT

摘要

In the early stages of a design project it is necessary to evaluate the design to determine its feasibility and where to concentrate further work. Thus the design knowledge of the collaborating designers must be made available whilst it is still both incomplete and uncertain, at a time when many design decisions have not yet been taken and many parallel designs may be under consideration. A toolset is being developed which will allow a team of designers to build a shared object-oriented model of a design that is able to evolve both in level of detail and in level of certainty as the design progresses, thus providing a smooth transition from conceptual design to the later, embodiment design phase. The model is able to represent uncertain relationships between objects thus permitting modelling of alternative (parallel) design paths, as well as uncertain attribute values.