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Bertch, William J.

Publications and source records attributed to Bertch, William J..

NASA Standard for Models and Simulations: Credibility Assessment Scale

As one of its many responses to the 2003 Space Shuttle Columbia accident, NASA decided to develop a formal standard for models and simulations (M&S). Work commenced in May 2005. An interim version was issued in late 2006. This interim version underwent considerable revision following an extensive Agency-wide review in 2007 along with some additional revisions as a result of the review by the NASA Engineering Management Board (EMB) in the first half of 2008. Issuance of the revised, permanent version, hereafter referred to as the M&S Standard or just the Standard, occurred in July 2008. Bertch, Zang and Steeleiv provided a summary review of the development process of this standard up through the start of the review by the EMB. A thorough recount of the entire development process, major issues, key decisions, and all review processes are available in Ref. v. This is the second of a pair of papers providing a summary of the final version of the Standard. Its focus is the Credibility Assessment Scale, a key feature of the Standard, including an example of its application to a real-world M&S problem for the James Webb Space Telescope. The companion paper summarizes the overall philosophy of the Standard and an overview of the requirements. Verbatim quotes from the Standard are integrated into the text of this paper, and are indicated by quotation marks.

Babula, Maria↗

NASA Standard for Models and Simulations: Credibility Assessment Scale

As one of its many responses to the 2003 Space Shuttle Columbia accident, NASA decided to develop a formal standard for models and simulations (M and S)ii. Work commenced in May 2005. An interim version was issued in late 2006. This interim version underwent considerable revision following an extensive Agency-wide review in 2007 along with some additional revisions as a result of the review by the NASA Engineering Management Board (EMB) in the first half of 2008. Issuance of the revised, permanent version,hereafter referred to as the M and S Standard or just the Standard, occurred in July 2008.

verification↗

Development of NASA's Models and Simulations Standard

From the Space Shuttle Columbia Accident Investigation, there were several NASA-wide actions that were initiated. One of these actions was to develop a standard for development, documentation, and operation of Models and Simulations. Over the course of two-and-a-half years, a team of NASA engineers, representing nine of the ten NASA Centers developed a Models and Simulation Standard to address this action. The standard consists of two parts. The first is the traditional requirements section addressing programmatics, development, documentation, verification, validation, and the reporting of results from both the M&S analysis and the examination of compliance with this standard. The second part is a scale for evaluating the credibility of model and simulation results using levels of merit associated with 8 key factors. This paper provides an historical account of the challenges faced by and the processes used in this committee-based development effort. This account provides insights into how other agencies might approach similar developments. Furthermore, we discuss some specific applications of models and simulations used to assess the impact of this standard on future model and simulation activities.

simulation↗