What does V&V consist of?

V&V activities include, but are not restricted to, the design of validation experiments; code verification; calculation verification; the design of computer experiments; response feature extraction; statistical screening and classification; surrogate modeling; uncertainty modeling, propagation, and quantification; test-analysis correlation; model calibration and updating; and the assessment of prediction accuracy.

Uncertainty quantification (UQ) plays a central role in V&V because the assessments of experiments, codes, calculations, models, and numerical simulations are generally made in terms of quantifications of errors and uncertainties. UQ also provides the missing link between the assessment of prediction accuracy, provided by the activities of V&V, and methods for decision-making under uncertainty, such as reliability and robustness analyses. Decision-making under uncertainty is another area that currently undergoes significant interest and research in engineering and physics.