SoS Fault Modelling at the Architectural Level in an Emergency Response Case Study

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the application of a Fault Tolerance Architecture Framework (FMAF) to model and analyze various faults in a systems of systems (SoS) within an emergency response context, highlighting its practical utility and areas for further development.

Contribution

It extends previous work by applying FMAF to diverse fault scenarios in an emergency response SoS, showcasing its effectiveness in complex fault modeling.

Findings

FMAF effectively models different fault types in an emergency response SoS.

Application of FMAF reveals new questions for fault tolerance development.

Demonstrates the framework's scalability to complex fault scenarios.

Abstract

Systems of systems (SoSs) are particularly vulnerable to faults and other threats to their dependability, but frequently inhabit domains that demand high levels of dependability. For this reason fault tolerance analysis is important in SoS engineering. The COMPASS project has previously proposed a Fault Tolerance Architecture Framework (FMAF), consisting of a collection of viewpoints that support systematic reasoning about faults in an SoS at the architectural level. The FMAF has been demonstrated previously with an analysis of an example fault in an emergency response SoS. In this paper we present further examples of the FMAF's practical use, by analysing different types of faults drawn from the same emergency response case study. These example faults exercise different aspects of the FMAF, demonstrate its use in more complex fault modelling scenarios, and raise new questions for further development.