Technical Report
Enterprise Architecture Tradespace Analysis

Report Number: SERC-2014-TR-043-1
Publication Date: 2014-02-21
Project:
Enterprise Architecture Tradespace Analysis
Principal Investigators:
Dr. Tommer Ender
Co-Principal Investigators:
The Department of Defense (DoD)’s Science & Technology (S&T) priority for Engineered Resilient Systems
(ERS) calls for adaptable designs with diverse systems models that can easily be modified and re-used, the
ability to iterate designs quickly and a clear linkage to mission needs. Towards this end, tradespace
analysis is of great importance. The Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) has been developing a webbased,
collaborative modeling and simulation tools that uses a Model-Based Systems Engineering
approach to address the analysis of alternatives for the acquisition programs to assess cost, schedule and
performance risk; most notably is the USMC funded Framework for Assessing Cost and Technology
(FACT). In parallel, the U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL) has been pursuing the Executable
Architecture Systems Engineering (EASE) research project, which links analytical, experimental and
training objectives with the technical complexity of modeling and simulation in an easy to use, scalable
tool. This document describes an effort to develop a formal Application Programming Interface (API)
between FACT and EASE, creating the ability to develop system concepts and assess Measures of
Performance (in FACT), and then send those system concepts to a campaign simulation to assess
Measures of Effectiveness (through EASE), and then back to FACT for a high-level tradestudy. A strategic
objective of this work is to lay the foundation for an ERS Tradespace software architecture.