Skip to content

Latest commit

 

History

History
851 lines (679 loc) · 40.9 KB

EPANET_QAPP.md

File metadata and controls

851 lines (679 loc) · 40.9 KB

Quality Assurance Project Plan

Research and Development on ORD’s Water Distribution Network Model – EPANET

US EPA/ORD/NRMRL/ Water Supply and Water Resources Division

October 2017

List of Acronyms

ASC - Advanced Simulation & Computing

EPA - Environmental Protection Agency

GIS - Graphical Information System

GPU - Graphics Processing Unit

LOF - Level of Formality

ORD - Office of Research and Development

OW - Office of Water

OWA - Open Water Analytics

QA - Quality Assurance

QAPP - Quality Assurance Project Plan

QC - Quality Control

RAP - Research Action Plan

UI - User Interface

VOTD - Version of the Day

WDN - Water Distribution Network

WDSA - Water Distribution System Analysis

WST - Water Security Tool

WNTR - Water Network Tool for Resilience

Table of Contents

  • Introduction

  • Project Management

  • Model and Algorithm Development

  • Software Engineering

  • Data Acquisition and Management

  • Software Verification

Introduction

This document describes the Quality Assurance (QA) program for U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Office of Research and Development (ORD)'s development and maintenance of its water distribution network (WDN) simulation model EPANET. Development of tools such as EPANET for the simulation of hydraulics and water quality in the nations drinking water systems is central to EPA's mission of protecting public health. EPANET is widely used to plan, design, analyze, and regulate WDNs. EPANET is also an important component of NHSRC's water security tools and has been adopted by third party commercial vendors as the computational core of their derivative products.

ORD developed EPANET in the 1990's out of a need to improve understanding of water quality processes that occur in WDNs. Major work on EPANET ceased in the early 2000's. It last received a minor update in 2008. It is of the utmost importance that EPANET is well engineered software that is fully capable of supporting these important stakeholder activities. NRMRL and NHSRC will work in close cooperation to develop EPANET software. This work is focused on restarting EPANET development, modernizing the code base, and integrating new features in response to EPA mission driven decisions and stakeholder needs.

This work is performed under the authority granted by Congress to the EPA within the Safe Drinking Water Act. This work directly supports drinking water research activities within ORD and water regulatory activities of the Office of Water (OW). EPANET is not currently represented in EPA ORD's Research Action Plan (RAP). Therefore, EPANET research, development, and maintenance are currently categorized as NHSRC/WIPD and NRMRL/WSD activities. This work will help communities efficiently direct WDN infrastructure investments by providing utilities with modeling tools for planning and design.

This document provides a description of the practices employed in this project to ensure the quality of the research and development activities conducted under it. The practices described here are adapted from the software quality practices described in the Advanced Simulation & Computing (ASC) Software Quality Plan (SNL, 2004), EPA Requirements for Quality Assurance Project Plans (EPA, 2001), EPA Guidance for Quality Assurance Project Plans for Modeling (EPA, 2002), and ORD Policy and Procedures Manual Section 13.9 Modeling Quality Assurance and Documentation (EPA, 2015). ASC is a Department of Energy (DOE) program that is focused on developing advanced modeling and simulation capabilities that leverage high-performance computing resources. This ASC derivative plan has been successfully used to manage project quality in several EPA NHSRC modeling software projects including WST and WNTR.

Project Description

This project focuses on restarting development of EPANET within NRMRL/WSWRD in partnership with NHSRC/WIPD and the broader community of stakeholders. To accomplish these tasks an extensible software architecture is needed that facilitates the development of modular feature sets by stakeholders inside and outside the EPA.

Some of the projects we may undertake include accelerating EPANET hydraulic and water quality algorithms through parallelization using commercially available software technologies, integrate EPANET-MSX, and features from the WST and WNTR toolkits and other EPANET-based software tools. Features from other toolkits may be modified to adapt them to the general planning, design, and daily operational analysis tasks for which EPANET is commonly used. We will also work with the broader Water Distribution System Analysis (WDSA) research community and our stakeholders to encourage the development of innovative new features for the EPANET.

Approaches developed as part of this research will be added to EPANET and its user interface (UI) application. As part of this effort, software implementations of algorithms and methodologies will be delivered. In particular, these technologies will be encapsulated in modules with clearly defined interfaces and parameters. Documentation will be provided for the algorithm implementation in software, as well as the installation and use of the software for these applications. This includes a description of the dependency on any third-party software.

Project Objectives

The primary objective of this project is to perform in house research and development on the EPANET UI application and computational engine features and to work with open-source development communities and other stakeholder organizations on integrating their feature contributions. The project team will employ software development best practices related to design, development, testing, documentation, delivery, installation, and maintenance to ensure cost effectiveness of this project and performance of the resulting software applications.

This research project comprises three major objectives:

  1. To deliver EPANET's new UI Application with graphical information system (GIS) functionality, Python scripting capabilities, and support for third party plugins.

  2. To modernize EPANET's computational engine making it a modular and extensible software library that utilizes multi-threading and graphics processing unit (GPU) computing capabilities to accelerate innovative WDN analysis applications by EPA, our stakeholders, and third party commercial developers.

  3. To harness EPANET as a technology transfer channel for delivering NHSRC's EPANET-based tools to a wider audience of potential users.

Project Schedule

The goal of this project is to establish a development regimen for EPANET that results in a cyclical schedule of periodic feature releases and software patches as needed. Periodic feature releases will integrate EPA and community feature development. Software patches will be developed in response to software quality issues as they are identified. Best practices in software development, quality assurance, and software verification as described in this document will be utilized to minimize the incidence and severity of software quality issues.

A bi-annual software release schedule is envisioned where EPANET UI and engine feature releases will occur every other year. Software patches will be developed and released on demand as the need arises. Separating feature release and software patches in this manner will help improve software quality since defects are frequently introduced along with new features. Establishing a release schedule will better serve our stakeholders who prefer release stability over a longer time horizon allowing them to better coordinate their own internal development activities with EPA's software releases.

Task Breakdown of Objectives

Task 0. Quality Assurance Plan

Project Task 1. EPANET Engine Development
Subtask 1.1 EPANET regression testing
Subtask 1.2 EPANET release
Subtask 1.3 EPANET refactoring
Subtask 1.4 EPANET feature development

Project Task 2. EPANET UI Application Development
Subtask 2.1 Acceptance testing
Subtask 2.2 UI debugging
Subtask 2.3 UI release
Subtask 2.3 UI refactoring
Subtask 2.4 UI feature development

Quality Definition and Goals

Quality is defined as the degree of excellence of something. Software quality can be measured in several meaningful ways:

• develop robust, reliable WDN modeling tools that can be effectively applied to realistic large-scale problems,
• solve real-world water problems as described by our stakeholders,
• satisfy the stated and implied needs, budget, and schedules of the EPA and our stakeholders,
• be technically innovative, cost efficient, and
• ensure continual quality improvement of the ongoing research and development activities.

The quality assurance/quality control (QA/QC) goals for this software development project include the following:

• Objectivity---each step in the software development cycle should use methods that are explicitly stated and adhered to

• Thoroughness---all elements of the study should be carried out and documented in a thorough manner

• Consistency---all work should be performed and documented in a consistent manner

• Transparency---the programming code, testing scripts, and documentation should clearly describe the assumptions and methods used and verify the capabilities specified in the functional requirements.

Guidelines and procedures are needed to govern software development. Our goal is to create EPANET software of the highest utility and quality. This goal motivates the following QA practices.

Quality Assurance Practices

This document adopts the breakdown of QA practices that are similar to those adopted in NHSRC project QA/QC documentation and EPA Requirements for Quality Assurance Project Plans (QAPPs) for Modeling:

• Project Management
• Computational Modeling and Algorithm Development
• Software Engineering
• Data Generation and Acquisition
• Model and Software Verification
• Training

The Assessment and Oversight category included in the EPA QAPP was intentionally omitted here. In its place, each practice is associated with artifacts that reflect how those practices will be assessed.

Each of these QA categories is described in the remaining sections of this document. An overview description provides a high-level discussion of the practices that are involved in each category, along with associated artifacts. The practices are specific research, development, and deployment activities, which generate artifacts: deliverables and work products that can be used to quantify compliance with QA goals. Whenever possible, metrics and measurements are used to provide quantitative insight into the effective quality of the process that is being followed.

Project Management

Software development can be thought of as a process not unlike technical writing, where a first draft is written and then through an iterative process of revision a final version is produced. Exploratory feature development is analogous to a rough first draft. Subsequent revisions improve on the initial version in a process of continual improvement. Project management is the systematic approach for balancing the project work to be done, resources required, methods used, procedures to be followed, schedules to be met, and the way that the project is organized. The unique aspects of the software development process need to be reflected in the project management strategy to efficiently achieve desired outcomes.

Determination of Applicable Practices and Level of Formality

The level of formality (LOF) for a project relates to how important it is to perform practices in detail given their consequences. For example, a basic research project will likely have a low LOF, since it is exploratory in nature. However, a project working on a capability that directly impacts the potential loss of human life would have a high LOF. As such, it is very important to maintain QA documentation for many practices.

High formality requires detailed documentation covering all aspects of the project; formal reviews inviting all stakeholders and other necessary experts; detailed and approved test plans; and customer waivers for deviation from any required practice or specification. Low formality allows documentation such as project notebooks and emails; less formal team-reviews; limited testing of research code until it is determined that the code will become a deliverable; and other relaxed procedures as approved by the project officer. Medium LOF is in between these two extremes.

PR1. Perform a risk-based assessment to determine level of formality and applicable practices.

Exploratory research on feature development will have a low LOF. White papers and research prototype software codes are the expected deliverables. Communication on these activities will occur during team meetings and will be informally documented. Mature software applications will have a medium-high LOF. This same risk based approach will also be applied to open source contributions as they are integrated with the code base. These applications will include software testing, version control, and documentation. Communication on these applications will occur during team meetings and on the software repository sites (https://github.com/USEPA/Water-Distribution-Network-Model and https://github.com/USEPA/SWMM-EPANET_User_Interface) and will be documented in meeting notes.

Requirements Analysis

The purpose of requirements analysis practices is to capture, develop, validate, track, and control the project requirements. These requirements typically span hardware, software, operations, support, documentation, product training, and other aspects. Requirements are based upon project mission, stakeholders' stated and implied needs, and organizational commitments. Although needs are not requirements they are considered along with requirements in order to improve quality. Requirements are inputs to other practice areas.

PR2. Identify, gather and manage stakeholders' expectations and requirements.

EPA and community members are stakeholders of this project and help to define the project requirements. Members of the EPA project team will be regularly updated through team meetings. These meetings might be open to other stakeholders (e.g., open source community members, such as Open Water Analytics (OWA), EPA's OW staff or water utility staff) as needed.

PR3. Derive, negotiate, manage, and trace requirements.

Project requirements are broadly stated in the Statement of Work for project tasks and this QAPP. These requirements will be refined as the project continues. Negotiation, management, and tracking of these requirements will occur during research group meetings and will be documented in meeting notes.

Risk Management

Risk management is the activity of identifying, addressing, and mitigating sources of risk before they become threats to successful completion of a project. A risk is a combination of the consequence and likelihood of an event. Risk management spans the lifetime of the project. This practice area seeks to identify only primary and reasonably likely risks in the following areas: organizational, regulatory, technical, and project management. Risk management is intended to mitigate consequences and/or likelihood of these identified risk events. For example, the project team would like to mitigate the risks of not completing a task on time.

PR4. Identify and analyze risk events.

Risk events will be identified during the writing of the Statement of Work and in project meetings and will continue to be discussed as this project continues. Risks to this project include: unexpected reductions in budget; tasks taking more hours than anticipated; unanticipated software bugs that are not easy to fix; and team members leaving this project for the short or long term. Additional risk events will be identified and analyzed in meetings and documented as necessary.

PR5. Define, monitor, and implement the risk response.

Tasks are included in this project in order to mitigate risks, and these include: maintaining the software in a version control repository; continuous improvements of test coverage; performing a standard suite of tests prior to each public release; routine updates to the GitHub site (https://github.com/USEPA/Water-Distribution-Network-Model) and EPA's EPANET website (https://www.epa.gov/water-research/epanet) to communicate new features; regular communication on budget and personnel issues between EPA project officers and EPA management.

Project Planning, Tracking, and Oversight

The purpose of project planning, tracking, and oversight is to guide project implementation while balancing, monitoring, and analyzing project quality, cost (including cost of quality), schedule, and performance. Project planning includes preparing a plan that describes how the project will be performed and managed. The plan typically includes at least a scope of work, project constraints and goals, project deliverables, a project timeline, an assessment of required resources, and the availability of the resources. Tracking and oversight includes taking corrective actions as necessary. Corrective actions bring projected accomplishments and results back into compliance. Corrective actions could include adding resources to meet schedules, modifying the schedule, adding project budget, modifying cost criteria, and re-negotiating requirements or acceptance criteria.

PR6. Create and manage the project plan

The "project plan" is the aggregate of the individual tasks in the scope of work. The team will review and discuss the project plan during team meetings.

PR7. Track project performance versus project plan and implement needed (corrective) actions.

Any significant deviations from the project plan will be reported to EPA management and discussed during team meetings. EPA project officers will determine any necessary corrective actions.

Model and Algorithm Development

Modeling and analysis capabilities can be applied to gain insight into an application. In some contexts, these activities can be separated, such as when the goal of a project is focused simply on developing a detailed model, or when a given model is assumed and the focus is on developing algorithms that can provide insight into this model. More generally, modeling and algorithmic development are often closely related activities. In many contexts, algorithmic issues arise in the design/implementation of software that can effectively model large-scale systems. Similarly, in combinatorial applications modeling and algorithmic design are often closely related because the combinatorial structure is used to design the algorithm. However, these activities can be distinguished from software engineering efforts, which are more specifically focused on ensuring that software generated has high quality itself.

Model and Algorithmic Design

The model design process includes activities like theoretical development, mathematical formulation, and identification of input data. Algorithmic design is often closely coupled with model design, as algorithmic issues arise when deciding how to formulate models and how to analyze their properties. This practice area focuses on activities that ensure that these design activities accurately reflect and abstract the properties of the underlying physical or conceptual process that is being modeled.

Modeling assumptions, related algorithmic formulations, and the limitations of these capabilities will be reviewed and critiqued internally during team meetings or dedicated peer reviews depending upon the required LOF. Preliminary reviews focus on initial ideas or direction for a specific work product. These reviews seek both a "sanity check" and consider possible alternatives. Detailed reviews focus on the completed work product to ensure its acceptability and typically will invite customer participation. Additionally, external reviews are conducted through peer-reviewed journal articles and conferences.

PR8. Document designs for models and algorithms

Designs for new models and algorithms will be documented in the user manuals, white papers, conference proceedings, and/or peer reviewed journal articles.

PR9. Conduct peer reviews of modeling assumptions and algorithmic formulations

All new models incorporated into software produced under this project will be peer reviewed during the traditional journal peer review processes, will be reproduced from already published peer review articles, or developed and approved by the open source community (e.g., OWA).

Preliminary Software Development

Preliminary software development efforts are targeted at developing "proof of concept" demonstrations that modeling and algorithmic techniques are effective for research purposes. These efforts typically employ small-scale or synthetic data sets to demonstrate the capabilities of the software. Furthermore, software design processes are generally minimized in favor of rapidly generating a basic modeling or analytic capability. Preliminary software development is done at low LOF unless specifically (by task and work breakdown) required to be at higher LOF.

PR10. Document preliminary software implementation

Preliminary software implementations will be documented in the code itself, with command-line help features, and/or simple 'readme' files. As the implementations mature, they will be documented in the software user manuals. The extent and formality of the software's documentation will evolve along with the software itself.

Testing Models and Algorithmic Techniques

Model testing is needed to characterize the uncertainty that can be expected in modeling outputs given uncertainties in model designs along with uncertainties in data used to apply models. Similarly, algorithmic tests are needed to confirm that analytical predictions match expected values. The following practices ensure that testing will be done to validate models and algorithms in this manner.

PR11. Unit testing and peer-review of modeling and algorithmic outputs

Automated unit tests will be developed to test individual modules of software packages against a suite of test problems with known solutions. All modeling and algorithmic outputs will be reviewed by the project team and external users.

Software Engineering

Software engineering is a systematic approach to the specification, design, development, test, operation, support, and retirement of software. The software engineering activities identified in this section are software development, integration of third party software, configuration management, and release and distribution management. Note that preliminary software development was addressed earlier and does not follow this section.

Software Development

The purpose of software development processes is to generate a correctly working product for the stakeholder; this product is often, but not always, software. Generally, software development processes include design, implementation, and testing of the software products or reuse of existing implementations. The specific instantiation of these practices depends on the LOF. Preliminary reviews of work products are done within the team. Final reviews invite external participation and are generally more formal.

PR12. Communicate and review design

Software development design will be discussed during team meetings, described in the software documentation, and in white papers when appropriate. All changes to the code will be automatically tracked at GitHub.com/USEPA website with open access to the public (https://github.com/USEPA/Water-Distribution-Network-Model).

PR13. Create required software and product documentation

As changes to the software are made, documentation will be updated. All changes to the code will be recorded by the GitHub websites. Whenever a change is made, the GitHub site instantaneously documents all changes to the code, the person who made the changes, and the date and time of the change. User manuals will be updated on a bi-annual basis to reflect the latest release. Software and product documentation will be available at all times to all users via GitHub (https://github.com/USEPA/Water-Distribution-Network-Model) and EPA's EPANET (https://www.epa.gov/water-research/epanet) websites.

PR14. Create and implement software tests

Tests have been developed (and will continue to be developed) to ensure that the software codes (e.g., EPANET and the UI application) build effectively and perform correctly against a set of test input files. These tests are conducted automatically and test results will be available to the public via the web. Additional tests are being developed as part of this project, e.g., code-coverage analysis will be used to quantitatively ensure that software tests are comprehensive.

Integration of Third Party or Other Software

Some software uses or incorporates third party or other existing software products in order to satisfy needed capabilities without incurring the cost of redeveloping those capabilities. Such software might be a simple library, an integrated set of libraries, compilers and linkers, or even an operating system. Sources of such software might be commercial, open source, other EPA projects, or research efforts. This practice area focuses on integration activities such as identifying, tracking, establishing trust in, assimilating, or honoring agreements (for example, protecting intellectual property) for third party or other existing software products.

PR15. Identify and track third party software products and follow applicable agreements

Third party products necessary for this project include operating systems, compilers, run-time libraries, and related tools. These are trusted products from reputable vendors and open source projects. In addition, the software developed for this project will be run on multiple platforms (and hence using different hardware, operating systems, compilers, and run-time libraries) which will allow comparisons to detect any significant third party product problems which might impact this project. EPA may use third party products obtained from reliable vendors. These are considered to be state-of-the-art modeling and analysis tools by the academic and business communities. EPA assumes no "ownership" of these third party products. If it is necessary to modify an existing third-party GitHub project in this effort, EPA will make a GitHub fork of that project to contain our changes. This will allow us to easily incorporate new changes made in the original project. If we make improvements of interest to the original project, this strategy will easily support offering our changes to them. All releases of the software (e.g., EPANET) will include applicable licenses for these third party tools and users must agree to the terms and conditions of all software packages.

Configuration Management

The purpose of configuration management is to provide a controlled environment for development, production, and support activities. Configuration management includes identifying which software product artifacts are to be managed; maintaining version controlled baselines of these artifacts; providing an issue tracking system for recording associated issues or change requests related to product artifacts; and tracking the status of these issues throughout the project's lifetime. Configuration management must ensure retrieval of any baseline artifact over the project's lifetime.

PR16. Perform version control of identified software product artifacts

A software repository has been set up for EPANET using GitHub and can be found at https://github.com/USEPA/Water-Distribution-Network-Model and at https://github.com/USEPA/SWMM-EPANET\_User\_Interface.

PR17. Record and track issues associated with the software product.

EPA will document and manage issues for EPANET using the GitHub Issue manager. Issues might include software bugs, new feature requests, or other problems identified by team members or outside users. The GitHub manager automatically records all submitted issues, assigns them to a project team member to solve, and sends automated email reminders. These issues will be discussed regularly during team meetings.

PR18. Ensure backup and disaster recovery of software product artifacts.

Backup and disaster recovery processes are performed by the system administrators. Software and related artifacts are stored on EPA workstations that are backed up on a weekly basis.

Release and Distribution Management

The purpose of the release and distribution practices is to manage versions of the software product that are distributed to stakeholders and other external users. Release management includes handling the requests for a release as well as preparation of the release. A release might include all elements of the product or a defined subset of the product. When the project team has completed all artifacts necessary for a release, the team creates a baseline in preparation for distribution. The baseline product undergoes release certification before being distributed and supported. Release certification ensures that all release criteria are satisfied, that identified release artifacts are adequately reviewed, and that all planned testing is completed and satisfactory.

PR19. Plan and generate the release package.

Official release versions of EPANET software will be produced at least bi-annually. The release includes updated documentation, updated GitHub websites, and testing reports. The most current version of the software under active development is continuously available via GitHub. The software repository will include instructions for developers interested in working with the latest unstable release.

PR20. Certify that the software product (code and its related artifacts) is ready for release and distribution.

EPA will use software tests to certify that software is ready for release and distribution. Software tests will be run automatically when changes are made to the repository and performance metrics will be defined that must be satisfied prior to release. For example, best software practices suggest that code coverage tests should evaluate 90% of files and 60% of lines of code. EPA will provide a software testing report documenting the results tests and testing metrics. Additionally, EPA will manually evaluate the software release before public distribution and perform cross-platform portability tests. EPA staff will also review all updates to user manuals.

Data Acquisition and Management

Input data for model development and application efforts are typically collected outside of the modeling effort or generated by other models or processing software. These data need to be properly assessed to verify that a model characterized by these data would yield predictions with an acceptable level of uncertainty. To this end, the following practices address various aspects of data acquisition, the calibration of the model based on these data, management of the data, and the software/hardware configuration needed for data processing.

Model Calibration

Models used for computational analyses require input data that relates to a particular application context. These models often require calibration of modeling parameters using this input data. These practices document the procedures for calibrating the model that will perform the designated predictive task, including records for how calibration is performed and maintained.

The objective of model calibration is to determine a set of model parameters that provide a fit of the model to the observed data that is somehow optimal under initial and boundary conditions that would be expected in normal operations of the model. Identification of these model parameters can be accomplished by trial and error calibration or inverse parameter estimation. Typically, there is not a unique set of model parameters that will provide the optimal fit, and acceptance criteria defining the acceptable level of mismatch between the model and the observed data are determined. These criteria incorporate the repeatability of the instruments that created the data set and this repeatability information is obtained from the source of the data. Calibration practices include recording the mismatch in the data as a function of different input parameter values. The frequency with which model calibration must be conducted is dependent on the data, the model and the intended use of the mode; however, any time model parameters are varied, the calibration process is repeated.

PR21. Document objectives and methods of model calibration activities [acceptance criteria, frequency, method of assessing goodness-of-fit]

Model calibration is not required for this stage of research. If any new model calibration activities arise, the project plan will be modified to define the required model calibration activities, including the objectives and methods that are required.

PR22. Document sources of input data used for calibration.

Model calibration is not anticipated for this project. If it does occur, all input sources of data will be documented.

Non-Direct Measurements

Some types of data needed for project implementation or decision making are obtained from non-measurement sources such as computer databases, programs, literature files, and historical databases. The following practices document these data sources and describe the intended use of this data.

PR23. Identify requirements for non-direct data and how this data will be acquired [e.g., quality standards required for this data]

A very small amount of non-direct data is needed for network analysis, such as population statistics, water usage rates, and health data. This data is obtained from peer reviewed journals and expert sources. Any non-direct data needed for this research will be maintained under version control and documented in user manuals or peer reviewed journal articles.

Data Management

Data management occurs at many stages of a project, including initial data acquisition, data transmission within the project team, data processing, and final use. The following practices document the procedures for data management to help ensure high confidence in final analyses based on this data.

PR24. Develop processes for managing data [e.g., labeling process, archiving policy, addressing data sensitivities]

Test datasets are currently maintained in the version controlled software repository for each project. Test datasets include network models and water quality data sets. Output files from specific analyses are also maintained on the software repository along with the input specifications to replicate results. Backups of all data will be made on EPA computers. Datasets that are not released as part of the software release are maintained in separate private project related software repositories on EPA computers.

PR25. Document hardware and software used to process data.

The research has been carried out on Windows workstations. The primary compute engine for this effort is a 64-bit Windows workstation. Support for other platforms such as Linux and Mac OS will be developed and documented.

Software Verification

The purpose of software verification is to ensure (1) that specifications are adequate with respect to intended use and (2) that specifications are accurately, correctly, and completely implemented. Software verification also attempts to ensure product characteristics necessary for safe and proper use are addressed. Software verification occurs throughout the entire product lifecycle.

Software verification activities are an integral part of software development, operation, and support practices. In this context, the goal is to detect potential problems as early as possible. Software artifacts to be verified typically include specifications, requirements, design, code, third party libraries, software verification plan, test cases, product documentation, and training package. If these artifacts are changed, retesting and reevaluation of the changes will need to occur.

PR26. Develop and maintain a software verification plan.

In this project, software verification includes: team review of models, algorithms, and code; peer review of user manuals, tutorial documents, and webinars; automated software tests and documentation (included in the software release packages); issue tracking through the GitHub site.

PR27. Conduct tests to demonstrate that acceptance criteria are met and to ensure that previously tested capabilities continue to perform as expected.

Software products will be evaluated with a suite of tests that ensure that software capabilities perform as expected. These tests will be automatically applied after software updates are made, and they will also be used to verify the behavior of software releases. Software tests will include unit testing, functional testing, integration testing, and code coverage testing. Baselines are established to ensure that the software performs as expected after changes are made to the code base. Software will not be released if tests indicate that the software is not performing as expected.

PR28. Conduct independent technical reviews to evaluate adequacy with respect to requirements.

EPA will define the independent technical reviews that are required for software verification, including peer reviews of user manuals and other training materials. For this project, technical reviews of documentation and training materials are completed by team members and by technical peer review. Software is tested by team members and outside users. The GitHub sites are used to communicate reviews of the software to the development team.

Training

The goal of training practices is to enhance the skills and motivation of a staff that is already highly trained and educated in the areas of mathematical modeling, scientific software development, algorithms, engineering, and/or computer science. This practice addresses training needs of the project teams especially for, but not limited to, following the project teams' process implementation. The purpose of training is to develop the skills and knowledge of individuals and teams so they can fulfill their process and technical roles and responsibilities. Project teams need to ensure that the training needs of the project are satisfied in accordance with their project plan.

PR29. Determine project team training needed to fulfill assigned roles and responsibilities.

The development of advanced capabilities for water simulation problems requires advanced training in mathematics and computer science, as well as an understanding of water systems (particularly water distribution systems). The principal training requirements for the EPA staff will be developing a greater familiarity of water distribution systems and related applied mathematical techniques. The technical staff will keep up-to-date on research pertaining to water distribution networks by attending technical conferences, reading scientific journals, and participating in team meetings.

References

1. EPA, 2001. EPA Requirements for Quality Assurance Project Plans, EPA QA/R-5, available at http://www.epa.gov/quality/qs-docs/r5-final.pdf.

2. EPA, 2002. Guidance for Quality Assurance Project Plans for Modeling, EPA QA/G-5M, EPA/240/R-02/007, available at http://www.epa.gov/QUALITY/qs-docs/g5m-final.pdf.

3. EPA, 2015. ORD Policy and Procedures Manual Section 13.9 Modeling Quality Assurance and Documentation, available at http://intranet.ord.epa.gov/about-ord/section-1309-modeling-quality-assurance-and-documentation.

4. SNL, 2005. Sandia National Laboratories Advanced Simulation and Computing (ASC) Software Quality Plan, Part 1: ASC Software Quality Engineering Practices, Version 1.0, Sandia Report SAND2004-6602.