Technical Modules
This chapter documents the seven DSP modules: the structured data, models and relationships that each stage of the decision cycle draws on.
For what a module is and how modules differ from processes, see Definition of a module.
The seven modules
| Module | What it does |
|---|---|
| Asset Registry | The authoritative repository of asset information, and the foundation the others depend on |
| Asset Performance | Assesses condition, capacity and serviceability, and forecasts how they will change |
| System Interdependencies | Maps the relationships between an asset and the assets, networks, users and organisations around it |
| Resilience | Evaluates performance under hazard scenarios, from exposure through to recovery |
| Sustainability | Brings whole-life environmental, social and economic performance into the decision |
| Risk Assessment | Values risk as likelihood against consequence, at asset, system and network level |
| Risk Mitigation | Evaluates the risks, costs and benefits of intervention plans |
Plus Module Development, which would cover how to build a new one.
How completely each is documented
The modules are not documented to a uniform depth in the source handbook. This table is worth reading before you rely on any one of them.
| Module | State of the source |
|---|---|
| Asset Registry | Complete and detailed |
| Asset Performance | Complete and detailed |
| Risk Assessment | Complete and detailed |
| Resilience | Complete, though briefer than the three above |
| Sustainability | Substantial, but the Outputs section was never written and editing notes remain in the text |
| System Interdependencies | An unfinished draft. Four sentences stop mid-way, Tools and models is empty, Inputs is a placeholder line |
| Risk Mitigation | Named and described in the module list, but has no section at all |
| Module Development | A heading with six empty sub-headings |
Where the gaps are, they are marked
Every page in this chapter states plainly what its source does and does not contain. Nothing has been invented to fill a gap. Where related material exists elsewhere in the handbook, the page links to it.
The common shape
The four fully documented modules follow the same six-part structure, which makes them quick to compare once you know the pattern:
| Section | What it answers |
|---|---|
| Purpose and questions answered | What the module is for, and the questions it can settle |
| Methods and principles | How it works, and the rules it must follow |
| Tools and models | What it can be built from |
| Inputs | What data it needs |
| Outputs | What it produces |
| Dependencies | What it needs from other modules, and what it gives back |
Read the dependencies sections together
Individually they describe one module. Read across all of them, they describe the information architecture of the whole DSP, including several relationships that no single page states on its own.
The clearest example is the Asset Registry and Asset Performance pair. One generates information and does not store it; the other stores it and does not generate it.
Which stage uses which module
The master diagram gives the full matrix. In summary, Asset and network evaluation draws on five of the six mapped modules, while Asset Registry appears only at the start and the end of the cycle, read at evaluation and written back to at outcome assessment.