8.4.1 Assessing Uncertain Benefits: a Valuation Approach for Strategic Changeability (VASC)

This paper describes a new technique for investigating the value of changeability in complex engineering systems early in the design process. The work is an extension of Epoch-Era Analysis, a framework that models contextual uncertainties over a system's lifecycle as a sequence of finite-duration periods of time. Strategies, defined as statements of intended change mechanism usage, are used to identify executed change mechanisms across the various contexts. Changeability is then evaluated in both time-independent (multi-epoch) and time-dependent (era) domains, using a proposed set of metrics designed to explore different dimensions of value. A case study demonstrates the application of the technique to a conceptual space system.

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