SERC Workshop: Model Based System Assurance

The SERC is hosting a Workshop on “Model Based System Assurance” from December 6-7, 2017 at Washington DC. Workshop attendance is by invitation only, with attendance limited to 70 delegates.

Research Workshop Leaders

• Tom McDermott, Georgia Institute of Technology
• Professor Ye Yang, Stevens Institute of Technology

Abstract

Model-Based Engineering (MBE) is seeing increased applications in the conception, design, integration, verification and validation (V&V) of mission critical systems. However, most current model based formal verification and validation methods, e.g. Model-Based Testing (MBT), remain focused on system components and have limited scalability and applicability to testing of large system behaviors. Today there is increasing system complexity and uncertainty associated with cyber-physical systems employed as system-of- systems, and increasingly sophisticated threats. It remains a challenging problem to effectively and efficiently identify and remove latent critical faults and improve overall system assurance within given system constraints and priorities, for both researchers and practitioners, across many domains. In particular, a mission critical cyber-physical system must consider of all classes of system failures, whether inherent or malicious, in rapidly changing external system-of systems contexts. Future methods, processes, and tools must go beyond traditional quality assurance scope to include emergent dimensionality of the design space through the evolving quantification of concepts such as flexibility and resilience. This workshop is focused on identifying and prioritizing appropriate research questions related to next generation system assurance, i.e. Model-Based System Assurance (MBSA), that have two significant attributes – relevancy from a practitioners’ perspective, and uniqueness and rigor from a research and academic perspective. We use the word “assurance” in association with safety, security, reliability and resilience as system design attributes. These attributes are achieved intentionally through a systematic and rigorous modeling, searching, and analysis of how the system could fail to meet its mission objectives, followed by the development and implementation of engineered features that provide design margins to compensate for threat uncertainty, aided by our ability to test these features as assurance hypotheses. This 2-day research workshop will address the state of the art and practical challenges in Model Based System Assurance, and investigate related research opportunities. Building from previous SERC research in Cyber-aware Systems, Engineered Resilient Systems, and Systemic Assurance, the workshop will focus on methods, processes and tools that reuse and innovate modeling techniques in MDE, support the automation of test design, as well as balance cyber mission assurance versus risk in today’s cyber threat environment.

Reminder: This event is by invitation only. Registration does not guarantee participation. Confirmation will be sent by Workshop Organizers by November 15th.