Information System Requirements Elicitation for Gravel Road Maintenance – A Stakeholder Mapping Approach

Gravel road maintenance is a complex endeavour comprising physical, technical and social aspects that have to be considered, and resources to be coordinated. The maintenance requirements are affected by weather conditions, geography, and traffic frequency, but also by the physical properties of the road and the previous maintenance performance. The physical properties and maintenance requirements are area dependent; in Northern Europe, ground frost, for instance, is a problem, while flooding is a problem in East Asia. Understanding the specific context-dependent variables is therefore important when designing a maintenance information system. In this paper, the maintenance information system requirements are identified focusing on the Swedish gravel road ecosystem. The system elicitation process is crucial to be able to specify the requirements of the future system and its users, and in this paper, a stakeholders’ approach is utilized. Different stakeholders are described, including their maintenance related needs, information needs, and roles in the maintenance system. The interdependencies between different stakeholders are also illustrated in an ecosystem diagram. From these descriptions, requirements for computerized maintenance management systems are elicited, and main users are identified. User scenarios are thereafter illustrated using the User Case technique.