A Framework for Evaluating the Standards for the Production of Airborne and Ground Traffic Management Software

Abstract

The development of Airborne and Ground systems is framed by specific regulations, usually expressed as standards. A disadvantage of those standards is the inherent complexity for its application and the verification of compliance given the high number of requirements to be checked in many different situations of the application and which are highly dependent on the applicable level of criticality. When the development of this type of system requires the incorporation of new personnel without enough knowledge about the standards, risks of mistakes in their application grow exponentially. The objective of this work is to develop an Expert System (ES) that helps to evaluate the application of the standards DO-178C and DO-278A throughout the project life cycle, at the same time it serves to facilitate both its use and the learning of its application to a wide group of professionals. The proposed underlying method for the ES will allow evaluating the set of development processes to check coverage of the standards DO-178C and DO-278A without depending on a specific life cycle model. The method involves a model of the set of processes, so they can be evaluated by the ES. Additionally, the ES will require a minimum configuration to evaluate the development of systems based on these two standards. The main result is a new generic Expert System based on rules capable of being adapted to different environment of evaluation, whichh minor configuration operations thus allowing that a Generic ES can act as a Specific ES for each situation. This configurable ES has been customized to evaluate the software life cycle based on the standards under study.