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Dependability Engineering Innovation for CPS - DEIS

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - DEIS (Dependability Engineering Innovation for CPS - DEIS)

Reporting period: 2018-07-01 to 2019-12-31

Objectives
Cyber-Physical-Systems (CPS) harbor the potential for vast economic and societal impact in domains such as mobility, home automation and delivery of health. At the same time, if such systems fail they may harm people and lead to temporary collapse of important infrastructures with catastrophic results for industry and society. Thus, ensuring the dependability of such (CPS) systems is the key to unlocking their full potential and enabling European industries to confidently develop business models that will nurture their societal uptake.
The open and cooperative nature of CPS poses a significant new challenge in assuring dependability. The DEIS project addresses this important and unsolved challenge by developing technologies that form a science of dependable system integration. In the core of these technologies lies the concept of a Digital Dependability Identity (DDI) of a component or system. DDIs are composable and executable in the field facilitating (a) efficient synthesis of component and system dependability information over the supply chain and (b) effective evaluation of this information in-the-field for safe and secure composition of highly distributed and autonomous CPS. This concept shall be deployed and evaluated in four use cases:
> Automotive: development of a stand-alone system for intelligent physiological parameter monitoring
> Automotive: enhancement of an advanced driver simulator for evaluation of automated driving functions
> Railway: Plug-and-play environment for heterogeneous railway systems enabling dependable exchange of information between components and subsystems
> Healthcare enhancement of clinical decision app for oncology professional targeting higher degree of dependability for ad-hoc systems

Approach
The DEIS project relies on three technology stages and their respective application in four industrial use cases, see Figure 1. Consequently, the technical approach is divided into the four following steps
1. Setup of an Open Dependability Exchange (ODE) Metamodel as a universal format for specifying DDIs to support exchange of dependability information. This environment shall integrate (a) a metamodel defining an ontology for dependability, (b) syntax and semantics of DDIs as a metamodel and transformation rules to generate DDIs based on ODE, as well as (c) tooling support for the modeling and analysis of DDIs
2. Framework for the creation and modular synthesis of DDIs to support efficient dependability assurance across industries and value chains during design time. This framework comprises (a) tooling support for expressing existing dependability models in ODE-compliant format, and (b) algorithms and tooling support for synthesis of DDIs, integration into dependability assurance cases and supporting change-impact analyses
3. Framework for the in-the-field dependability assurance in CPS to enable dependable integration of systems in the field. This next framework has two objectives: (a) development of infrastructures for evaluation of integration of new systems in the field, and (b) development of algorithms for the on-board evaluation of DDIs
4. Development of autonomous and connected CPS use cases for different application domains, and validation of applicability and scalability of the DDIs. This last step targets the application of the different DDIs steps in different relevant industrial use cases
The following results have been be achieved
> Open DDI technology: creation of the DDI framework (a) to increase efficiency of dependability engineering at development time, and (b) to enable trustable collaboration of ad-hoc systems of systems during runtime. The DDI technology is freely available (white papers, public deliverable, open source SW)
> Dissemination and community engagement: During the second half of the project, numerous activities have been performed to disseminate the DEIS outcomes and engage the community. This includes the publication of 35 peer-reviewed papers to relevant scientific conferences (e.g. IMBSA, SafeComp), organization of special sessions (e.g. IMBSA), creation of a professional project video and regular activities on professional social medias (LinkedIn)
> Exploitation: Creation of 20 “DEIS Tangible Outcomes (DTO)”: Exploitation of the DEIS outcomes is very challenging (a) since the DDIs are a complementary set of dependability engineering methods and tools, and (b) because the DEIS project relies on an ICT technology development (DDI) and its application in 4 industrial use cases. The proposed DTOs (1 pager success story for each relevant project outcome) provide the rationales about user needs, DEIS contribution and exploitation strategy.

Even though some minor deviations could be noted (delays for deliverable delivery), all milestones have been be achieved and deliverables submitted.
Following the recommendations from the reviewers, important work have been performed to clearly structure the DEIS project outcomes and more accurately address their exploitation. Especially, a list of 20 DTOs have been identified (see D7.4 “Exploitation plan”)
Regarding exploitation, the exploitation strategy relies on (a) sharing the core ICT related-innovation through an “open DDI technology” approach (mainly the outcomes of WP3 and WP4), and (b) a more closed exploitation regarding the industrial use cases (mainly the outcomes of WP5 and WP6).
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