Session: 02-01 Development and Application of Verification, Validation, Uncertainty Quantification Standards

Paper Number: 138662

138662 - A Cross-Society Collaboration Project, Mapping Consistency Confirmation Frameworks of Different Communities 

The computational modeling community has generated substantial bodies of literature and standards on VVUQ for computational models. Many computational models play key roles in the engineering and life cycle management of large systems, in which many other artifacts are also present—including product production, operation, and sustainment specifications, models other than computational models (e.g., MBSE models), datasets, and many other types of artifacts. Across the different related disciplines involved in large programs and supply chains, there are substantial bodies of literature, standards, and practices concerning frameworks for the confirmation of consistencies (agreement, conformance, alignment) between certain of those different artifacts.

Examples of such diverse "managed consistencies" and their related “confirmations” include: measures of agreement between a simulation and the phenomenon it simulates, measures of agreement between the requirements for an engineered system’s performance and a predictive simulation of that performance, the agreement between a conceptual or mathematical model and an implemented computational model, agreements between the specifications of an engineered system and the specifications of a computational model for simulation of that system, agreement between the semantics of two different kinds of modeling systems, consistency of a model’s intended context of use and plans for actual use of that model, and others.

While we see some of the same terminology (e.g., “verification”, “validation”, etc.) across different groups and disciplines, that terminology is sometimes used to describe seemingly different things in spite of the same or similar terms. Recognizing this, working groups of several technical societies (including AIAA, INCOSE, and ASME) have agreed to “compare notes” in a structured way by collaborating to create a “Rosetta Stone” mapping that shows how the currently-published and practiced versions of these consistency management frameworks connect to each other, where they do.

This presentation will summarize the limited-scope comparison that is currently planned, using a simple example comparing a few aspects of such current practices and standards from the ASME Computational Model VVUQ community and the INCOSE Systems Engineering ISO 15288-based systems community. This limited scope activity is focused on describing only consistency confirmation frameworks and only the current situation, but the resulting reference should later be helpful to others planning how to deal with potential implications.

The authors of this presentation include representatives from the first three society working groups engaged in this comparison: ASME VVUQ 50, the Digital Engineering Integration Committee of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), and the MBSE Patterns Working Group of the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE).  

Presenting Author: William Schindel ICTT System Sciences

Presenting Author Biography: William D. (Bill) Schindel is president of ICTT System Sciences, a forty years old systems engineering company specializing in use of reusable, configurable model-based patterns as a means of enhancing effectiveness of the innovation and life cycle management process. Schindel chairs the MBSE Patterns Working Group of the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE) and is an INCOSE Fellow. He has been a working member of the ASME VV50 Committee on Computational Models for Advanced Manufacturing since it was started in 2016, authoring ASME guidance for the life cycle management of such models. He is a member of the American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Digital Engineering Integration Committee (DEIC), where he has served on the authoring teams for the AIAA reference models for Digital Threads and Digital Twins, based on the INCOSE Innovation Ecosystem MBSE Pattern. He has applied these methods commercially in automotive, medical device and health care, mil/aerospace, construction, consumer products, and advanced manufacturing sectors. Prior to that activity, he was a member of the faculty of Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, and before that served in the IBM Federal Systems Division in aerospace systems engineering roles. He also founded and led an electronic systems manufacturing enterprise that supplied network management infrastructure to the public telephone carrier market during its migration to digital technologies.