Simulation Verification and Validation by Dynamic Policy Specification and Enforcement

Abstract

This article presents a new verification and validation technique for simulation using dynamic policy specification and enforcement. Security requirements, certain functional requirements, and constraints can be formally specified as policies, and they are used to check at runtime whether the behaviors of the system under simulation are within the given constraints. A policy violation reveals a potential design error of the system under simulation. This article also presents the policy specification language and the policy development framework that are used to specify policies, to verify their completeness and consistency of policies, to translate them into executable representations, and to enforce them at runtime. The policy specification language and the policy development framework are fully integrated into the simulation infrastructure. An example is used throughout the article to illustrate the policy specification and enforcement processes. The article discusses different algorithms of policy enforcement and their space and time complexity.