Combining Requirements, Use Case Maps and AADL Models for Safety-Critical Systems Design

Good requirements engineering practices are essentialfor developing correct safety-critical systems. In this paper, we report our experience in combining existing rich modelinglanguages such as AADL (Architecture Analysis and DesignLanguage), URN (User Requirements Notation) and RDAL(Requirements Definition and Analysis Language) to supporta requirements engineering and design process as promotedby the FAA Requirements Engineering Management Handbook(REMH). Each of the combined language is well suited for thecapture of specific concerns of the REMH practices allowingreusing the capability from the individual languages but alsofrom their combined use. Our approach has been applied to thespecification and analysis of a medical device example from theREMH and shows several benefits due to the early discovery oferrors resulting from each modeling language and from theircombination. This experience also identifies important needs for automated model management not covered by current state-of the-art modeling techniques.