Dutydepends

Dutydepends is a formal framework used to model the dependencies between duties or obligations within a system of governance, safety, or compliance. In this approach, each duty is represented as a node in a directed graph, and a directed edge from duty A to duty B indicates that B must be fulfilled (or is required) for A to be performed or to satisfy A. In some literature, the term dutydepends is written in lowercase as dutydepends. The framework can incorporate both hard dependencies, which must be satisfied prior to executing a duty, and soft dependencies, which influence feasibility, priority, or risk but are not strictly prerequisite.

Some variants express dependencies using logical operators: a duty may depend on the conjunction of several subduties (AND) or on at least one of several alternatives (OR). The model supports constraints such as ordering, mutual exclusion, and concurrency, and can be extended with attributes like priority, owner, and evidence requirements. Dutydepends is frequently used to analyze how complex obligations propagate through a system and to identify critical dependency chains.

Dutydepends is used in several domains: compliance engineering to trace regulatory obligations; safety-case analysis to show how core duties are supported by prerequisite activities; risk assessment to identify critical dependencies; and governance for clarifying accountability in organizations. In AI governance and software engineering, it helps reason about obligations across components and ensure traceability from policy to action. Limitations include the subjectivity in defining what constitutes a duty, potential graph complexity, and the need to integrate dynamic changes. See also deontic logic, dependency graphs, responsibility assignment, and policy compliance frameworks.