A framework for Model-Driven Engineering of resilient software-controlled systems

Emergent paradigms of Industry 4.0 and Industrial Internet of Things expect cyber-physical systems to reliably provide services overcoming disruptions in operative conditions and adapting to changes in architectural and functional requirements. In this paper, we describe a hardware/software framework supporting operation and maintenance of software-controlled systems enhancing resilience by promoting a Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) process to automatically derive structural configurations and failure models from reliability artifacts. Specifically, a reflective architecture developed around digital twins enables representation and control of system Configuration Items properly derived from SysML Block Definition Diagrams, providing support for variation. Besides, a plurality of distributed analytic agents for qualitative evaluation over executable failure models empowers the system with runtime self-assessment and dynamic adaptation capabilities. We describe the framework architecture outlining roles and responsibilities in a System of Systems perspective, providing salient design traits about digital twins and data analytic agents for failure propagation modeling and analysis. We discuss a prototype implementation following the MDE approach, highlighting self-recovery and self-adaptation properties on a real cyber-physical system for vehicle access control to Limited Traffic Zones.