Technology-aware complexity methodology for cost forecasting of space projects

Abstract

Risk management, which identifies and proactively responds to uncertain factors, is essential for developing a large and complex system. In particular, the necessity of the process gets larger for recent space system projects since they involve high complexity and collaborations among various organizations. The risk assessment identifies risk factors that can adversely affect costs, schedules, and performance during a project life cycle, yielding the impact and likelihood of each risk factor. An accurate cost risk assessment is essential for proper cost risk management, whose failure may lead to project failure or significant cost increase. The basis of cost risk assessment is accurate cost forecasting. So far, a large number of Earth observation satellites have been developed and operated for geographic information acquisition and identification/management of Earth resources. In addition, many Earth observation satellite development projects are planned for future use. It is essential to forecast a satellite project cost before initiating the project, providing necessary information for project planning. The closer the estimated value is to the actual value, the lower the risk to the cost. Various past cost forecasting methods for satellite development projects have been introduced in the literature. But most of them require information that is not publicly available, whose applicability for cost forecasting of a new satellite system is limited. This paper proposes a new methodology to forecast the cost of a satellite development project to improve the accuracy of cost risk assessment. The proposed methodology is developed based on the concept of the technology-aware complexity, which measures the difficulty of a satellite development project considering the technological development level. The validity and effectiveness of the proposed methodology have been demonstrated through cost forecasting test cases for Earth observation satellite development.