Value-based engineering. Value-based engineering (VBE) is a system development and innovation approach that implements the IEEE St. 7000 "Model Process for Addressing Ethical Concerns during System Design" released in 2021. The standard was developed over a five-year period based on the initial work published in "Ethical IT innovation: A value-based system design approach" in 2015. Similar to value sensitive design, the standard's intent is to provide a framework for the consideration of human values and ethical concerns. In Fall 2022, it was adopted by the International Organization for Standardization as ISO/IEC/IEEE 24748-7000.

VBE follows a sociotechnical perspective on system development, and has a philosophical foundation in Max Scheler's material value ethics and post-phenomenology.

As a complement to IEEE St. 7000, VBE presents ten principles considered essential to ethical system design, as well as two risk-based pathways for specifying system requirements.

Engineering process 
In VBE, ethical system design is achieved through four processes aligned with ISO/IEC 15288.

 Concept of operation and context exploration process: This process aims to gain an initial understanding of the context, relevant stakeholders, legal, social, environmental, and ethical feasibility, and control over the intended external partners of a proposed system, and to develop a tangible concept of operations.
 Ethical values elicitation and prioritization process: The impact of a proposed system on values and virtues is investigated using a utilitarian, virtue ethics, duty ethics, and culture-specific perspectives. While the utilitarian perspective identifies harms and benefits to the direct and indirect stakeholders, the virtue ethics perspective identifies potentially harmful virtue effects, and the duty ethics perspective considers the impact of the system on duty-ethical principles. 
 Ethically aligned design process: During this process core values and their value qualities are translated into , which are then specified into system requirements. Unique to VBE is that either a threat analysis (low risk) or an impact assessment (high risk) is used for specifying system requirements, depending on the damage potential and probability of occurrence.
 Transparency and information management process: This process accompanies the entire development lifecycle and focuses on creating transparency about the prioritized core values and their logical chain to the system requirements.

The ten principles 
VBE complements IEEE St. 7000 by introducing ten principles essential for addressing ethical concerns during system design.

 Organizations take responsibility for their ecosystem and forgo services over which they have no control.
 Organizations actively consider not investing in a system if there are ethical reasons for not doing so.
 Systems are developed in open collaboration with stakeholders or their representatives.
 Ethical investigations are used to elicit values.
 The context of a system's implementation is to be understood and its potential impact anticipated.
 Organizations are recommended to respect the ethical principles of the laws and signed agreements in its target market region.
 Organization management makes a public and personal commitment to the chosen core values.
 Organizations provide transparency on prioritized core values and their linkage to system requirements.
 Core values are understood in depth through conceptualization and their associated value qualities.
  are specified into system requirements through either a threat analysis (low risk) or an impact assessment (high risk).

Criticism 
There are only a limited number of case studies that show that VBE is effective in facilitating the development of innovative or even ethical systems.

See also 

 Value sensitive design
 Value-based innovation
 Stakeholder theory

External links 

 Value-Based Engineering: Technology for Humanity Hub

References 

IEEE standards