Establishing information valuing characteristics for engineering design information

Abstract

Throughout the engineering design process engineers make decisions based on information from various sources. Most of time they do so without formally analysing quality and without making a formal judgement on what they think of its value. There are some methods or assigning 'value' to information in a number of fields and it is a general concept that is widely accepted. However with a range of information characteristics, which can be critical to assess information, the question to ask is, "is it possible to establish metrics to theoretically assess the value of information within the context of engineering design and in relation to the engineering design process?" This paper starts to address this question. It first makes a brief review of the work that has been undertaken that is related to assigning "value" to information and then focuses on analysing the existing information valuing methodologies. In addition, the characteristics that are involved in the models and methodologies are also investigated and summarized. Based on the results, the key information characteristics that are critical to information value have been identified. Finally the paper introduces a theoretical set of metrics that use information characteristics as the assessment criteria to judge the value of information.