Model Based Systems Engineering: Fundamentals and Methods

Foreword

With the ubiquitous spread of potentially disruptive technology in our daily life, we face continuously, increasingly complex systems, and as engineers it is legitimate to ask ourselves whether we are still able to manage that complexity, whether requirements and specifications, as well as their verification and validation are still needed and even possible. Patrice Micouin’s book clearly answers “yes” and discusses a framework, both epistemological and practical, in order to address that challenge.

Patrice Micouin advocates a change of paradigm and introduces the Property-Model Methodology which relies on three claims:

1) in order to improve requirement engineering and aim for less ambiguous requirements that are better understood by the various stakeholders and the suppliers, a propertybased requirement theory is needed;

2) in order to have objective specifications that can be interpreted by all stakeholders in the same way, model-based systems engineering should be used: the models are executable within simulations and yield results that are easily accessible and shared by the stakeholders;

3) simulation becomes the main means to validate the specifications and verify the proposed designs, but does not fully replace verification of the unitary physical products as well as their integration.

All existing systems engineering processes call for an initial effort on having from the start testable, measurable and unambiguous requirements. However, the methodology developed ...