Regulatory Requirements Dependency in Global Developments

For global and remote development (Spichkova et al., 2013), we need to deal with diver- sity in regulations in different contexts since this affects the specifics of the requirements implemented in the deployed systems in different jurisdictions. Suppose a product P has to be developed for application in N countries C1... CN with the corresponding sets of reg-

ulations RegulC1, RegulC2, ... , RegulCN. These sets could have a (non-empty) joint subset

Regul of the regulations that are equal for all C1... CN. We denote for each RegulCj the

RegulCjʹ = RegulCj\Regul. For simplicity we avoid discussion on the side-effects of

changing a particular regulatory requirement.

We denote the set of requirements to the product P valid for the country Cj by RCj, where

R denotes the set of requirements to the product P. The complete set R of requirements to the product P is then defined as a union of the sets RCj, j ∈ {1... N}. The sets of require- ments might be different for each country, i.e. RCi is not necessary equal to RCj for the case i ≠ j; i, j ∈ {1... N}. We divide the set R of requirements to the product P into three (disjoint) subsets:

‒ The set RFN denotes the functional and non-functional requirements that are independent from the regulations. We assume that the requirements of this cat- egory are the same for any of C1... CN.

‒ The set RLcommon denotes the requirements based or depending on the regu- lations that are common across all countries of interest i.e., C1... CN.

‒ The sets RLspecificCj denote the requirements based or depending on the regu- lations that are specific to a country.

By RLCj we denote the set of requirements for the product P, which are valid for the country Cj, i.e., the union of RLcommon and RLspecificCj. Figure 5-1 presents the re-

quirements dependencies for the product P that should be developed for the countries C1... CN. Consider the set RLCjALL to be the set of all legal requirements of the country Cj;

we can then see the set RLCjP as a "projection" of RLCjALL on the product P.

On this basis, we can adapt and extend the definitions for product lines (Pohl et al., 2005) to specify the variability aspects of the regulations and concrete requirements. We define a variation point in regulations as a part of a regulation that can vary within several juris- dictions (i.e., within several countries, provinces, states, or organisations). We say that a regulation x is a variant of a regulation y, if these regulations are equal modulo (a number of) variation point(s).

Figure 3 Requirements dependency for product P

As all requirements from the sets RLcommon, RLspecificC1, ..., RLspecificCN (let us call

them contract requirements) are based or depending on the regulations, we suggest for better traceability to specify them following one of the predefined formats, e.g., "X shall be compliant with the limits set in the applicable regulations. [rgC1... rgCN]", where X

denotes component or its feature, the list [rgC1... rgCN ] represents the variation point, and

each rgCi denotes the name of the corresponding standard of the country Ci with reference

to concrete regulations (regulatory requirements). Thus, regulatory requirements become parameters of the contract requirements. While instantiating the parameter with a con- crete regulation, we obtain the corresponding contract requirement.

Example 1: Let us assume the case when a product is built for three different countries C1, C2, and C3. Each of these countries has their own regulations describing allowed limit

for emission energy produced by Communication Backbone Network (CBN) equipments used by the product. The decision of frequency bands for used by Short Range Devices (SRD) is a national matter, and the assignment of frequency spectrum is not consistent worldwide.

Not only the spectrum assignment but also the operational limitations (e.g., emission en- ergy) of the emitting devices (e.g., LAN, alarms, and cell phones) can be diverse across countries or regions. This diversity reflects different degrees of tolerance to risk associat- ed with health hazard caused by radio emission. For example, laws in some countries are relatively more lenient with respect to restricting the use of electrical devices, so as to stimulate economic growth; this is in contrast to the precautionary approach to health safety (Mazar, 2009).

An example of a contractual requirement is:

req1: The CBN equipment (such as 'Ethernet network') shall be compliant with emitted field strength limits set forth in the applicable regulations [rg1C1, rg1C2, rg1C3].

The corresponding concrete requirement for each country Ci would be req1[rg1Ci], where

rg1Ci denotes the corresponding regulatory requirement, e.g., let us consider rg1C1 as

Federal Communications Commission Standards, FCC 47 CFR Part 15, where rg1C2 and

rg1C3 will be artificially created for illustration purposes (cf. Table 5-1). Thus, rg1Ci ∈

RegulCi ; for i ∈{1,2,3}, which also means that req1[rg1Ci] should belong to the set RLspecificCi.

Table 5-1 Regulations applicable to req1 and req2

rg1C1 The emissions from an intentional radiator operating over 960 MHz shall not ex- ceed the field strength 500 µV/meter when measuring at 3 meter distant

rg1C2 The emissions from an intentional radiator operating between 2GHz-3 GHz shall not exceed the field strength 500 µV/meter when measuring at 3 meter distant rg1C3 The emissions from an intentional radiator operating between 2400-2483.5 Hz shall

have power range 10 to 1000 microwatt in EIRP measurement rg2C1

rg2C2 rg2C3

The primer shall dry tack-free in not more than 2h and shall dry hard in not more than 10h. The primer film shall withstand against scratch test under a load of 900 g; and the primer shall show no cracking when subjected to the bending test at 23◦ using 6.4 mm diameter mandrel.

Example 2: Let us continue the Example 1 by discussing the following contract require- ment:

req2: Inside and outside surfaces of switchboards shall be painted with a high quality metal primer coat conforming to applicable standards or regulations [rg2C1, rg2C2, rg2C3]. Let rg2C1 is defined to be the standard Canadian General Standard Board GP-71, where rg2C2 and rg2C3 are the same as rg2C1 (cf. Table 5-1), i.e., rg2C1, rg2C2, rg2C3 ∈ Regul.