Integrating Safety and Reliability Analysis into MBSE: overview of the new proposed OMG standard

Abstract

Model‐Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) is gaining popularity in organizations creating complex systems where it is crucial to collaborate in a multi‐disciplinary environment. SysML, being one of the key MBSE components, has a good foundation for capturing requirements, architecture, constraints, views and viewpoints. It allows linking different types of models that come from different engineering disciplines. However, inherent safety and reliability aspects of a system are not addressed by the SysML language. A new group at the OMG has been created by industry experts in this area to address these aspects in a new standard. In this paper, with the intent to get feedback from the systems engineering community, the members of the newly formed group present the current state of the Safety and Reliability Analysis Profile for UML submission, which extends the SysML language with the tools for modelling safety and reliability aspects. This paper also explains the value users get from taking a model‐based approach to safety and reliability analysis and integrating it into the MBSE toolkit. Open issues and challenges are also discussed.

OMG standard for integrating safety and reliability analysis into MBSE: Concepts and applications

“…In this paper, we present the current state and content of the specification. This paper updates a previous publication from 2017 (Biggs, et al 2018), which discusses the need for this specification and initial work performed. We demonstrate the core concepts of the specification and show how the simple concepts are powerful enough to unite all safety and reliability information across a variety of analysis types.…”

Towards a Common Systems Engineering Methodology to Cover a Complete System Development Process

“…Recently, there has been a big push in different industries to integrate safety and reliability information into MBSE. (Biggs et al 2018) and (Biggs et al 2019) introduced a new approach to model safety and reliability constructs in SysML and tightly integrated the safety and reliability model with the SysML model. As there is a long history of various organizations integrating safety and reliability with MBSE using different methods and approaches, the Cyber MagicGrid has been augmented with a fifth pillar: Safety & Reliability.…”

A SysML Profile for Fault Trees—Linking Safety Models to System Design

“…In 2017 the OMG issued a Request for Proposals on how to represent fault trees in SysML as part of the Safety and Reliability Analysis Profile for UML, which will extend the SysML language with "the capability to model safety information, such as hazards and the harms they may cause, model reliability analyses, including Fault Tree Analysis (FTA) and Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA), and use structured argument notation to organize the model and specify assurance cases" [1]. As part of this, an early profile for Fault Tree Analysis (FTA) and Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) has been developed and published [1] and is likely to form part of SysML 2.0. However, while the new profile is a step in the right direction, there were several pragmatic aspects that made it unsuitable to adopt for the development of UltraFan within Rolls-Royce.…”

“…However what we outline is sufficient to start to migrate the existing fault tree models into the SysML repository. Similar to SysML extensions in UML, the proposed Fault Tree Profile reuses a subset of UML 2.5 and provides additional extensions to aid Fault Tree analysis in UML and SysML [1]. The meta-model of our Fault Tree profile is shown in Fig.…”