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Main Authors: McGeorge, Dag, Glomsrud, Jon Arne
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.12804
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author McGeorge, Dag
Glomsrud, Jon Arne
author_facet McGeorge, Dag
Glomsrud, Jon Arne
contents A growing number of safety-critical industries agree that building confidence in complex systems can be achieved through evidence and structured argumentation framed in assurance cases. Nevertheless, according to practical industry experience, assurance cases can easily become too rigorous and difficult to develop and maintain when applied to complex systems. Therefore, we propose to use contract-based development (CBD), a method to manage complexity originally developed in computer science, to simplify assurance cases by modularizing them. This paper will not only summarize relevant previous work such as constructing consistent modular assurance cases using CBD, but more importantly also propose a novel approach to integrate CBD with the argumentation in assurance case modules. This approach will allow subject-matter and domain experts to build assurance case modules together without having to know CBD. This can help a broader application of these methods in industry because subject matter experts outside of computer science can contribute to cross disciplinary co-development of assurance cases without having to learn CBD. Industry experience has proven four rules of thumb helpful for developing high-quality assurance cases. This article illustrates their usefulness and explains how modular assurance enables assurance that accounts for the interdependency of different concerns such as safety, security and performance.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2402_12804
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Modular Assurance of Complex Systems Using Contract-Based Design Principles
McGeorge, Dag
Glomsrud, Jon Arne
Logic in Computer Science
Software Engineering
A growing number of safety-critical industries agree that building confidence in complex systems can be achieved through evidence and structured argumentation framed in assurance cases. Nevertheless, according to practical industry experience, assurance cases can easily become too rigorous and difficult to develop and maintain when applied to complex systems. Therefore, we propose to use contract-based development (CBD), a method to manage complexity originally developed in computer science, to simplify assurance cases by modularizing them. This paper will not only summarize relevant previous work such as constructing consistent modular assurance cases using CBD, but more importantly also propose a novel approach to integrate CBD with the argumentation in assurance case modules. This approach will allow subject-matter and domain experts to build assurance case modules together without having to know CBD. This can help a broader application of these methods in industry because subject matter experts outside of computer science can contribute to cross disciplinary co-development of assurance cases without having to learn CBD. Industry experience has proven four rules of thumb helpful for developing high-quality assurance cases. This article illustrates their usefulness and explains how modular assurance enables assurance that accounts for the interdependency of different concerns such as safety, security and performance.
title Modular Assurance of Complex Systems Using Contract-Based Design Principles
topic Logic in Computer Science
Software Engineering
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.12804