Second semester of AMASS

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More than one year has already passed since AMASS started. This post summarises the progress made during the second semester of the project, complementing previos posts on e.g. the progress during the first semester and the first project review.

During the second semester, the AMASS consortium has worked on the following technical activities: (1) completion of the specification and implementation of the first tool platform prototype (Prototype Core); (2) evaluation of the implemented tools by using some representative industrial case studies, and; (3) specification of the conceptual approach for the second prototype of the AMASS platform (Prototype P1).

The AMASS Prototype Core (figure below) is the result of merging pre-existing toolsets that were developed within the OPENCOSS, SafeCer, and CHESS projects. The AMASS platform consists of a set of toolsets providing base functionalities. The AMASS tool data specification has been documented in the Common Assurance and Certification Metamodel (CACM), which merges and evolves the OPENCOSS Common Certification Language and SafeCer metamodels. The three pre-existing toolsets are: (a) the OpenCert project at Polarsys/Eclipse to enable argumentation edition, evidence management, and management of compliance with standards (substantiation phase); (b) the CHESS project at Polarsys/Eclipse to enable system architecture specification, and; (c) the EPF (Eclipse Process Framework) project at Eclipse to enable compliance management with standards (planning phase).

Deliverables D3.4, D4.4, D5.4 and D6.4 documented the Prototype Core and provided guidance through a User Manual and a Developer Manual. The AMASS platform has further been validated. The main recommendations resulting from the validation concern the platform development process for the next iterations, asking for stable and consistent versions of the tools and of the documentation before the beginning of the validation, for more traceability between requirements, use cases and developed functionalities, and for methodological guidelines.

The industrial evaluation of Prototype Core has focused on modelling standards for different application domains (industrial automation, automotive, railway, avionics, space and air traffic management), establishing an assurance project, and managing the assurance assets. Case Studies represent different potential applications within the target industrial domains in the AMASS project. AMASS usage scenarios offer a general overview of how the AMASS solutions are intended to be used in the proposed case studies.

The approach to specify usage scenarios is based on the following principles: (a) description of usage scenarios are centred on the AMASS platform “user” perspective, i.e. how users will interact with the AMASS tools, in the context of typical business cases; (b) realization of usage scenarios reports the results of the application of usage scenarios in each of the AMASS prototyping iterations, and; (c) benchmarking of usage scenarios will use a number of research/industrial questions and metrics to measure the effectiveness of AMASS tools regarding the proposed business goals.

For the third aspect, different work packages have worked on a conceptual and design view for the second prototype (Prototype P1), including: (1) the approach for contract-based system modelling, integration with V&V tools, and specification of architectural and technological patterns; (b) the multi-concern assurance approach, which includes safety and security interplay; (3) tool interoperability, collaborative features, and data access management, and; (d) the solutions for process- and product-based assurance reuse.

In addition, progress has been made on non-technical aspects such as community building and industrial impact, as well as dissemination, training, exploitation, and standardization. A report about open source platform project creation in the AMASS project has been prepared. We have also coordinated the first EAB (External Advisory Board) workshop to be held in Trento, Italy, in September 2017, together with the SafeComp 2017 Conference.