Human-Centred Requirements Engineering for Critical Systems: Insights from Disaster Early Warning Applications

2025-11-17 · Source: cs.SE updates on arXiv.org · Field: Technology & Digital — Software Development & Engineering, Emerging Technologies & Innovation · Depth: Expert, quick

Summary

A new human-centred requirements engineering (HCRE) process is proposed for critical systems, emphasizing human and social contexts alongside traditional technical assurance. This process aims to make vulnerable-user needs explicit and traceable from design guidelines to requirements, prototype features, and validation. Researchers conducted a structured review of inclusive design literature, identifying 62 guidelines relevant to four vulnerable communities: older adults, low-digital-literacy users, rural users, and colour-blind users. These guidelines were then translated into a catalogue of 67 functional and non-functional requirements specifically for inclusive early warning systems. The requirements were operationalized in an adaptive disaster early warning prototype and evaluated through six interviews and eight cognitive walkthroughs. The evaluation yielded strong positive evidence across all four vulnerable groups, with particularly encouraging results for elderly and rural users, whose requirements achieved full validation coverage and high positive validation rates. The study positions human-centricity as a traceable quality concern for safe and equitable critical systems.

Key takeaway

For Requirements Engineers developing critical systems, you should integrate human-centricity as a core, traceable quality concern, not an afterthought. Apply the proposed HCRE process to translate inclusive design guidelines into explicit functional and non-functional requirements, ensuring safety for vulnerable users. Prioritize validating your prototypes with diverse user groups, especially elderly and rural populations, to improve system dependability and coverage.

Key insights

Human-centricity is a critical, traceable quality concern for dependable critical systems, especially for vulnerable users in disaster early warning.

Principles

• Human-centricity ensures critical system dependability.
• Inclusive design guidelines translate to explicit requirements.
• Vulnerable user needs are traceable throughout development.

Method

The HCRE process involves reviewing inclusive design literature, translating guidelines into functional/non-functional requirements, operationalizing them in a prototype, and validating with vulnerable users via interviews and cognitive walkthroughs.

In practice

• Develop a catalogue of inclusive design requirements.
• Validate prototypes with diverse vulnerable groups.
• Prioritize elderly and rural user requirements.

Topics

• Human-Centred Requirements Engineering
• Critical Systems
• Disaster Early Warning Systems
• Inclusive Design
• Vulnerable Users
• Requirements Validation

Best for: AI Scientist, Software Engineer, Research Scientist, AI Ethicist

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Editorial summary, takeaway, and curation by AIssential. Original article published by cs.SE updates on arXiv.org.