QRAS, or Quantitative Risk Assessment System, is a Windows-based software tool that is both user-friendly and powerful, assisting the risk analyst in modeling deviations from a system’s nominal functions, the timing and likelihood of such deviations, potential consequences and scenarios leading from initial deviations to such consequences. This then helps the analyst understand the risks associated with the system by generating quantitative estimates of risk levels and identifying the most significant contributors.
NASA holds the copyright on all of the federally funded research results; the University jointly owns a U.S. patent in conjunction with NASA and has been notified that the common cause failure patent has received a Notice of Allowance.
ITEM Software of California has obtained an exclusive position to the technology and is currently beta testing the software for NASA. As a condition of the exclusive position, ITEM Software has opened a branch office in Maryland.
The full release of QRAS is scheduled to be announced at RAMS 2005 in Alexandria, Va., in January. Software training and methodology courses are being developed and at least three or four classes will be held in 2005.
The development of the QRAS began when NASA, in recognizing a need for risk assessment software, turned to one of the world’s experts at the University of Maryland, College Park, Dr. Ali Mosleh. Dr. Mosleh is a member of the Board of Editors for the Journal of Reliability Engineering and System Safety. He is program chairman of the Executive Committee of the Human Factors Division, American Nuclear Society, as well as a member of the Risk Analysis Methodology Committee, International Society for Risk Analysis. He also serves as co-director, Center for Technology Risk Studies at Clark School of Engineering and University of Maryland Director of the X-Ware Systems Reliability Analysis Laboratory, which focuses on reliability of integrated hardware-software-human systems. Dr. Mosleh is an expert consultant to national and international organizations on risk and reliability issues
A Maryland team was formed, including Dr. Carol Smidts and Dr. Franciscus Groen. With the help of a NASA inventor, the team developed a first generation risk assessment tool dubbed QRAS. Members of the Maryland team have also produced an improved version of the software including quantification of common cause failures. |
