QDS, Inc.

Quantitative Decision Support, Inc. (QDS) was founded in July, 2000 by Dr. Philip O'Neill to exploit lessons learned and to bring to maturity and broaden the applications for analytical techniques that had initially been developed for Y2K risk analysis for the National Contingency Planning Group for Y2K (NCPG Y2K) of the Department of National Defence in the Government of Canada.

Relationships Analysis for Linked Systems (RAFLS) was developed for NCPG Y2K with the purpose of analyzing dependency relationships among infrastructures and government services in Canada. This requirement arose in the context of risk analysis for the Y2K event. Domain experts recognized that any failures of computer systems due to the "millennium bug" might potentially have propagated failure or degraded performance to other systems, infrastructures and services as a result of dependency relationships between them.

While the domain experts were able to evaluate direct dependency relationships, a tool was needed to help them map out the potential cascading impact of degradation to any level of depth in the raffle of dependency relationships. In other words, RAFLS was intended to assist decision-makers in putting risk into perspective by identifying those that would have the most impact and those that induced the most vulnerability in Canadian society. RAFLS was used to assist planners in carrying out risk assessment and contingency planning in advance of 1 January 2000. Furthermore, it would have enabled decision-makers to assess the potential consequences of actual disruptions had any occurred.

RAFLS was the result of Dr. O’Neill’s interaction with a working group of six principal domain experts which conducted risk analysis and contingency planning along with a users' group of about twelve others. Through a continuous process of using the software and enhancing its functionality in response to users' requirements, six "versions" of RAFLS were created between October 1998 and December 1999.

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