Society increasingly depends on software systems. For example, complex safety-critical software is embedded in many systems across most industry sectors, ranging from automotive and aerospace, to energy and maritime. In the context of evolving software systems with typical life spans of 10 to 20 years, the unavoidable and often unanticipated changes to system requirements and platform technical characteristics make it difficult to achieve and sustain high system dependability. It is therefore necessary to develop technologies to effectively support software verification and evolution activities such as testing, inspections, change impact analysis, refactoring and re-engineering. Across most software development organizations, however, such activities tend to be extremely expensive, unsystematic, and rather ineffective.
Research focus
The projects of this group encompasses a variety of research endeavors to reduce the costs and improve the effectiveness of the verification, validation and evolution of large-scale, complex software-based systems. Our approach is largely based on model-driven engineering principles; that is, the use of models of the system to drive activities such as requirements engineering, architecture analysis, automated testing, or safety analysis. Many of our solutions rely on modeling standards such as the Unified Modeling Language (UML) and its extensions such as SysML for system engineering and MARTE for real-time, embedded systems. Though we at present have a strong focus on various aspects of software testing, our current work also includes other important aspects of verification, validation and evolution, such as requirements definition and quality assurance, model-based analysis of non-functional properties, automated inspections, safety analysis and certification, and system integration.
Group profile
Though located in Norway, our working language is English and our group is international, with representatives from eight nationalities. We hire the best students and scientists from all over the world and this is one of our major strengths. Instead of identifying research problems solely by reviewing the research literature or through discussions with our academic colleagues, we focus on analyzing problems in direct collaboration with industry partners, assess the state of the art with respect to the identified problems, and devise novel, practical solutions. We then try them out in realistic settings and reflect on our experience to propose refinements in an iterative fashion. Our goal is to increase the relevance of our research and therefore its impact.
Research projects (in collaboration with industry and public administration partners)
- VERDE Model-based, automated testing of real-time, embedded systems (with Tomra, WesterGeco, ABB, SINTEF)
- ModelME! Requirements engineering, architecture modeling and integration, Safety analysis and certification of integrated control systems in the maritime and energy sectors (with DNV, FMC)
- InspectIT Automated inspections and analysis of model-driven development artifacts (with Kongsberg and Tomra)
- AMOS Automated Model-based Quality-of-Service Testing of Video Conferencing Systems (with Tandberg)
- ATOS Automated Testing Of Sofie (with Norway's tax department)
Example quotes from partners
"Building increasingly complex systems while still keeping up with demanding development schedules and continuously improving product quality is challenging. An efficient testing process and state-of-the-art testing methods are a necessity.We see the cooperation with Simula as a highly important success factor here."
M. L., Manager QA/Test Solutions Platforms TTG, Tandberg (now part of Cisco)
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"I found the collaboration with Simula both interesting and stimulating and at a high professional level."
A-H. E. M., System engineer, Kongsberg Maritime
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"The (Simula) team has exhibited a high degree of competence in their domain of expertise, model-driven software engineering. We are confident that their research will lead to useful improvements in our integration and configuration practices."
A-K. L., Software head, Subsea Control Systems , FMC Technologies
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We believe that Simula Research Laboratory is the leading research group in software verification and validation in Norway, and one of the best groups worldwide. We already have a fruitful collaboration with Simula. We are confident (further research with Simula) will have a significant impact on our ability to develop dependable software systems in time and within budget.
C. H., Technology Manager Software, TOMRA
The APPROVE group (2010)
