universAAL - AAL reference architecture requirements (D1.2-B)

Furfari F., Girolami M., Wolf P.

Ambient Assisted Living 

D1.2 reports about the requirements analysis process in universAAL and summarises the related results. The current document D1.2-B, due at month twelve, is the second report from four planned versions. The main focus of this document is to present the approach to and the results of the second iteration of the requirements analysis process within universAAL. For more general information about the role of this report in universAAL, please refer to Section 2 that provides more details on the purpose of D1.2, its relationships to the other universAAL deliverables as well as the positioning of D1.2-B in relation to the other versions of D1.2. The second iteration, in contrast to the first iteration that focused on a list of consolidated requirements, is continuing the analysis process in an incremental and iterative fashion. As shortly discussed in Section 3 this iteration is mainly dealing with four significant drawbacks inherent in the consolidated list of requirements, namely: . The high number of around 480 consolidated requirements that makes it difficult to use this list efficiently within the project; . The non-technical nature of some of the requirements which makes it difficult to derive architectural design decisions; . The inconsistency in the description when it comes to level of abstraction which sometimes prevents the architecture designers to derive clear conclusions and decisions from requirements; . The scope and content of individual requirements that were not in line with other decisions regarding scope and content of the project as captured by other artefacts produced in the project, especially the concerns. To deal with these drawbacks the second iteration is therefore narrowing the focus to reference architecture requirements. This is achieved by analysing the purpose of reference architecture requirements within the project in Section 4 and by defining a set of features that helps in identification and formulation of those requirements. Additionally, the relation towards the project's main concerns, as captured in D1.1 is newly assessed as part of Section 5 that leads to re-categorisation of requirements that is also presented in Section 5. Finally, these considerations lead to a reformulation of the requirements resulting in a considerably more focused list of approximately 100 reference architecture requirements. This list of requirements is also the final result of the second iteration and can be viewed at the very end of Section 5. As outlined in the conclusion section at the very end, D1.2-C and D1.2-D will continue with this iterative refinement process and, thereby, enhance the quality, the completeness and the clarity of requirements in each of the next iterations until a final set of universAAL reference architecture requirements is achieved

Source: Project report, UniversAAL, Deliverable D1.2-B, 2011