INCOSE NE Membership December 2021 Monthly Meeting: WebEx

Agenda: 

6:00-6:45 PM: Introductions of Attendees and Chapter Business

6:45-7:30 PM: Invited Speaker

7:30-7:45 PM: Q&A and Open Discussion

Title: 

Overarching Properties Proposed as a Next Generation Safety Assurance Standard

Abstract:  

The Overarching Properties (OPs) have been created by an international working group and are being evaluated by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), industry, and other certifying agencies in an effort to streamline certification processes. Their intent is to facilitate the use of alternative approaches and to allow flexibility to combine the system, software, and complex hardware certification. The hope is that the FAA may eventually establish an Advisory Circular that offers the OPs as a Means of Compliance (MoC) for software approval (and eventually systems and hardware) by showing the product possesses the three OPs: Intent (specification of the intended behavior), Correctness (implementation of the intended behavior) and Innocuity (safety of unintended behavior). In the certification community, there is still a concern about the practicability   of using such high-level properties in certification. This talk aims to address that concern by showing possession of the OPs in an industrial case study using assurance arguments. We propose a hybrid approach for the certification process that combines OPs with existing certification standards. Thus, OPs can be used for parts of a system that uses technologies that are not supported by current standards or for which existing standards require additional effort without commensurate additional safety assurance.

Bio: 

Scott Beecher is an active member of several RTCA committees including SC-205 (for DO-178C and supplements), SC-240 (Topics for Software Advancement) and FAS (Forum for Aeronautical Software), along with membership in the Overarching Properties Working Group (OPWG). He has been a software certification designee for 14 years, is a member of the University of Connecticut (UCONN) Engineering board, and an instructor for 14 years for the FAA’s Software Fundamentals class. He has a BS degree in Computer Engineering from UCONN and MS degrees in Computer Science and Business Management from RPI. Mr. Beecher is a longtime Pratt & Whitney software developer and Engineering Fellow for Software Certification where he establishes training and standard work.

Dr. Zamira Daw is leader of the AI System Engineering Team at Raytheon Technologies Research Center (RTRC). Her current research focus is on the continuous certification of AI systems funded by DARPA and NASA grants. At RTRC, she has worked in different projects using model-based design, formal methods and AI techniques for design and verification of multi-agent robotic systems, and human machine systems. Before joining RTRC, she researched how to leverage formal methods in model-based design processes for safety-critical applications during her PhD at University of Kassel and her postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Maryland.