MSc Course in Systems Engineering

November 2004


New information on resit added, July 2005. The resit is based on the same problem but you should carefully read what you are required to included in your final report. It is not exactly the same as required before.

These pages provide access to course materials and background information for the MSc course module in systems engineering. The course aims to give you a general introduction to this topic and to look in more depth at one aspect of systems engineering. This year, the topic that is explored in depth is an approach to requirements engineering for critical systems.

The majority of the following links take you to PDF versions of handouts that will be distributed. If you miss a class session, please download the appropriate material from here. Any unclaimed copies of handouts will ONLY be available until 19th November in the lecture room - please don't ask for paper copies after that date.

Course aims and objectives (link to dept. page)

Introduction

Timetable (15th-19th November 2004)

Ian's homepage

Course notes

Socio-technical systems

An integrated approach to dependability requirements engineering

The MHCPMS system: A case study

Presentations

Socio-technical systems (2 lectures)  
Requirements engineering Conceptual systems design
Dependability requirements Security engineering
Requirements engineering for safety-critical systems Risk-based requirements analysis
Integrated safety requirements engineering (2 lectures)

Self-assessments

For each of the course topics, there is a series of self-assessment questions. From here, you can download sheets with the questions on their own and sheets with questions plus answers.

Questions

Socio-technical systems 1 Socio-technical systems 2
Requirements engineering Conceptual systems design
Dependability requirements Security engineering
Requirements engineering for safety-critical systems Risk-based requirements analysis
Integrated safety requirements engineering 1 Integrated safety requirements engineering 2

Answers

Socio-technical systems 1 Socio-technical systems 2
Requirements engineering Conceptual systems design
Dependability requirements Security engineering
Requirements engineering for safety-critical systems Risk-based requirements analysis
Integrated safety requirements engineering 1 Integrated safety requirements engineering 2

Guest Lectures

This year, we have two eminent guest lecturers each of whom have many years of practical experience in systems engineering.

Mr Stan Price, Price Project Services. Stan's talk has an intriguing title:

"The 40 Years War - Stan Price-v- IT"

Mr Bob Malcolm, Ideo Ltd.

Assessment

There is no exam for this course and assessment is through individual coursework. However, you will work in groups during the course to develop ideas for the course project.

The course project will be concerned with the specification and conceptual design of an electronic election system. This system shall support the registration of electors, voting, vote counting and analysis and system auditing. The courswork will involve investigating and analysing key issues concerned with e-election systems.

If you are not familiar with the way that elections are conducted or the UK electoral system, then you should look at the first 2 links from the further information about e-voting page below.

Initial assessment

Discussion groups

Problem description

Assessment and presentation

Further information on e-voting

Resit

The resit for this course will be based on the same e-voting problem but some different deliverables are required. The above links on the problem description and further information on e-voting are still current. The revised specification for the resit coursework is set out below:

Reset: Requirements, assessment and presentation of reports