A GRAPH-BASED APPROACH TO VERIFICATION AND VALIDATION OF SIMULATION MODELS AND APPLICATIONS

Model defects, if not detected and removed in time, propagate through the development life cycle of modelling and simulation (M&S). The later they are detected, the more problems they cause, and the more expensive and time-consuming is their correction. A variety of verification and validation (V&V) processes has been proposed for the purpose of detecting as many different defects as possible in the early M&S development phases. Unlike those approaches, this work focuses on tracing the dependencies of associated defects and proposes a generic approach to establishing dependency chains in terms of a directed graph. Based on the dependency chain,,, all associated defects can be tracked and identified. Applied in combination with other existing V&V processes, this approach provides an additional opportunity to detect and correct all the related defects of M&S work products consequently.