Software Engineering Institute

Software increasingly dominates safety- and mission-critical system development. Issues are discovered long after they are created. This three-year project aims to make systems safer and more secure by enabling early discovery of system-level issues through virtual integration and incremental analytical assurance. This project consists of four efforts, all of which use the Architecture Analysis and Design Language (AADL), a CMU SEI-created, internationally standardized language for designing software-centric critical systems. CMU SEI researchers developed an extension to AADL that enables system designers to describe how their system meets security goals. Researchers proposed a library of safety design patterns that capture key safety architecture fragments. They developed a collection of system viewpoints for certification authorities to perform hazard analyses. And they proposed a way to unify behavior specifications to enable automated analyses. In combination, these tools make it easier to specify, design, and assure critical systems that are safer and more secure.