Methodology for communications system assessment. Report 1

This document summarizes the first year of activities within the three-year project Communication Assessment, COAT. The report describes the project background, the interpretation of the term assessment made by the project team and the content of the commission. The report not only describes the methodology used in the treatment of the assessment problem but also the development of a rudimentary assessment methodology. A test of this assessment methodology has been performed on a civilian communication system in a military scenario. Furthermore, experiences made during the work are discussed. Finally, the report describes how some of these experiences will influence the forthcoming development of the methodology. The final methodology for assessment must work as a support for a wide range of assessment tasks, from the quick one-man investigation to the long-lasting complex assessment with many experts involved. The proposed methodology draft may to the reader seem to be very complicated and overambitious. This is justified by the fact that during the development, it is necessary to have a detailed roadmap of the process and also a good document structure in order to obtain a well defined test object. The descriptions outlined here are to be treated as the basis for the continuous work with the development of a user friendly and straightforward methodology as possible.