Understanding functional resonance through a federation of models: Preliminary findings of an avionics case study

Abstract

FRAM has been proposed as a method for the analysis of complex socio-technical systems, which may be able to overcome the limitations of traditional methods that focus on simple cause and effect relationships. FRAM on its own may be most useful for modeling the system at a high level of abstraction. There is less evidence about its utility for modeling interactions at greater levels of detail. We applied different modeling approaches to investigate situations that may give rise to functional resonance in an avionics case study. FRAM was used to model higher-level dependencies, HAMSTERS was used to provide a deeper understanding of human functions, and ICO-Petshop was used to model technical system functions. The paper describes preliminary results of the application of this federation of models, and highlights potential benefits as well as challenges that may have to be overcome. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.