Institute Name: Defence Research Agency(DRA) Description: The DRA was established as an Executive Agency of the Ministry of Defence (MoD) in April 1991. It represented the bringing together of four previously separate defence research establishments, which had been known as Royal Aircraft Establishment, Royal Armament Research and development Establishment, Royal Signals and Radar Establishment and Admiralty Research Establishment. On 1 April 1993 the DRA became a Trading Fund. It is wholly owned by the UK government but is a distinct organisation headed by a Chief Executive who derives his authority from, and is directly accountable to, the Secretary of State for Defence.
The aim of the DRA is to provide the expert scientific and technical services required of it, primarily by the MoD and Other Government Departments in a way which is cost-effective and, where necessary impartial; in support of this, the DRA is also encouraged to provide services to non-exchequer customers. The DRA is expected to continue to be the MoD's principal source of scientific advice, technical support and research.
In fulfilling its aim the DRA's main objectives are to provide, on agreed terms, a range of scientific and technical services to support the areas of strategic research, operational assessment and studies and project support.
To meet these objectives the DRA is improving its technical competence and expert knowledge of scientific and technological developments worldwide; developing new more effective ways of doing business; meeting targets set for it by the Secretary of State and exploiting profitable commercial outlets for its services.
DRA Malvern is the Agency's main centre for work on software engineering, information technology, electronic systems/devices and on their defence applications. It is staffed by high calibre scientists and engineers from many disciplines working at the frontiers of scientific knowledge.
Many interactive and collaborative relationships already exist with government, industry and the universities both in the UK and overseas and there are good prospects that these will be considerably extended in the future. Indeed, the skills and facilities of DRA Malvern are such that it is regarded as the UK Centre of Excellence in its field and is said to rank with the top electronics research laboratories worldwide. This is evidenced by the winning of twelve Queen's Awards for Technological Achievement jointly with UK industry.
The DRA has recently set up two Dual Use Technology Centres (DUTC) aimed at developing and exploiting collaboration between military and industrial applications. In particular a DUTC has been set around the DRA's Software Engineering Centre with the objective of becoming the UK's prime centre for research, development and exploitation of software technology across all industries.
Researchers associated with the project:
Dr. M G Hill Mr. P Houghton Mrs. K Hughes
Brief CVs of Key Researchers:
Name: Dr. M G Hill
Nationality: British
Academic Qualifications & Experience: Since joining DRA Dr.Hill's main experience has been in software development. His current research activities are centred within the requirements definition programme where he leads the work package on computer modelling (prototyping) and scenario analysis. Prior to his involvement on the Requirements Programme he had spent a number of years in the electronics area working on the design, development and application of hardware description languages. Over recent years this took the form of the development of formal verification and formal specification tools. Prior to this his research activities were in the development of the language and software compiler for the hardware description language ELLA. Before joining DRA Dr.Hill worked for four years as a post doctoral researcher on the mathematical modelling of fluid flow problems.
Name: Mr. P D Houghton
Nationality: British
Academic Qualifications & Experience:Peter Houghton joined the DRA at Farnborough in 1980 where he was responsible for providing data acquisition, reduction and analysis systems. After recruitment he continued his education part time and in 1982 received an HNC in Computer Studies. He subsequently progressed into full-time computer systems management and was jointly responsible for designing, implementing and supporting an extensive network of computing resources at DRA Bedford. He has acted as a consultant on a number of software based projects, the majority being executed by external contractors. His initial research work included software engineering and software development methods and, before leaving Bedford to join the requirements engineering group at Malvern to lead the enterprising modelling work package, he was working on a strategic research programme investigating the use of AI techniques in the areas of simulation management and flight control.
Name: Mrs. K J Hughes
Nationality: British
Academic Qualifications & Experience: Kay Hughes graduated from Nottingham University with an honours degree in Psychology and Physiology in 1972. Most of her career has, however, been in software development with SPL and SD, where she has been involved mainly with the design and implementation of infrastructure software, especially compilers. More recent, freelance work has included lecturing in training courses for IPSYS on their integrated project support tool kit, the Tool Builder's Kit. Since 1986, Kay has been a BCS examiner for the Part 2 papers on Data Processing and Information Systems. She joined DRA in June 1991, where she was initially working on the problem of timing analysis using techniques based on the MALPAS static analyser. For the last three years she has been researching requirements definition methods and techniques for supporting the acquisition of systems for MOD, with particular emphasis on Command, control and communication information systems (CIS).
Selected Publications:
K J Hughes, R M Rankin and C T Sennett (1994): "Taxonomy for requirements analysis", in "Proceedings of ICRE, First International Conference on Requirements Engineering" pp 176-179 IEEE Computer Society Press, 1994 ISBN 0-8186-5480-5
Hill M G.(1994): 'Report on the Potential of the Object Oriented Approach to Specifications', Milestone Report, DRA/CIS(SE2)/PROJ/1/DEL/E2
Hill M G.(1995): 'Scenarios, Use-Cases and Scripts for CIS Requirements Definition', Technical Report, DRA/CIS(SE2)/PROJ/1/P&S/2/SUS
Contact Details:
Principal Investigator: Dr. Mike Hill
Address:Command and Information Systems Sector, Defence Research Agency (Malvern), NX14 St. Andrews Road, Malvern, WR14 3PS, Worcestershire, UNITED KINGDOM
Telephone number: + 44 1684 894331
Telefax number: + 44 1684 894303
EMail: hill@dra.hmg.gb
List of Members