Principal Investigator Nancy Leveson
Co-investigator Wesley Harris
Models provide a means for understanding complex phenomena and recording that understanding in a way that can be communicated to others. As complexity grows, the use of prototyping to evaluate designs becomes increasingly impractical. The alternative is to use behavioral and structural models, essentially executable specifications, along with advanced analysis tools and simulation environments to evaluate the system design before construction begins. We are investigating the design of executable specification languages that can form the basis for advanced engineering environments. Usability is a large component of this research: The executable specification languages must be reviewable and usable with minimal training by a large variety of domain experts if model-based system engineering is to become a practical reality. At the same time, to allow for automated analysis tools, the languages must have a formal (mathematical) model as their foundation.