Quality Models

Research

In the last years 3 different quality models were developed at the Institute of Engineering Geodesy Stuttgart

The first model was developed to describe quality of data types occuring within the field of transport telematics such as sensor data or trajectories of road users. The second model is used to describe the quality of construction processes in Civil Engineering. The third one helps to describe the quality of engineering geodesy processes in Civil Engineering. In the following the basic idea of a quality model is explained. Detailed information about the different quality models can be found on the individual project pages.

Quality Model, what does it means?

A quality model is a conceptual framework in which the abstract term of quality is gradually resolved into individual aspects; so the abstract term is substantiated. Using a quality model, the quality of a product or process should be completely describable and comparable. A quality model is consisting of characteristics and parameters.

  1. Quality characteristic: inherent characteristic of a product or process, related to a requirement. The quality characteristics form the highest hierarchy level. Each characteristic may have any number of sub-characteristics or parameters.
  2. Quality parameters: the parameters substantiate the characteristics. Each parameter may be filled with a specific (measured) value. Additional required quality values are defined on the parameter level.

Properties:

Besides the characteristics and parameters, a quality model should be complete according to the actual group of products or processes. All requirements should be represented by characteristics and parameters. Another desirable attribute of a quality model is the independency. The characteristics and parameters should not depend on each other. A parameter should not influence another parameter.

The parameters are quality measures, which describe the quality by means of parameter values:

Parameter type
Definition Example Value type
measure Number or quantity that records a directly observable value or performance. All measures have a unit attached to them. 5 cm, 0.01 gon real
indicator Indicator that presents a binary yes/no answer for an item True / False boolean
count Total number of items that are subject to yes/no decisions 5 integer (1..n) 
rate Number of yes / no decisions with respect to the total number of items 5:10*100 = 50 % percentage % (0..1) 

Table 1 - Quality parameter types

Contact:

This image shows Volker  Schwieger

Volker Schwieger

Prof. Dr.-Ing. habil. Dr. h.c.

Director of the Institute

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