Software Engineering in the Light of Evolving Standards in CBRN Disaster Management

Maintaining an automated military CBRN (Chemical, Biological, Radiological or Nuclear) command information system that implements the requirements defined in evolving standards poses a challenge. In this paper we present the considerations regarding the design, the construction, and the testing aspects of software engineering as well as the choice of building blocks adopted in a recent rewrite of the system operated by the Austrian Armed Forces. By means of analyzing past as well as anticipated future changes to the underlying standards we show that the impact of changes can be limited and thereby maintenance effort can be significantly reduced.