In recent years, industry and government have begun adopting Model Based Engineering (MBE) practices in an unprecedented way. No longer exclusively the domain of isolated experts, MBE has been implemented across the full product lifecycle. This success is, however, giving rise to new challenges. The ability to share disparate models across teams, organizational boundaries, and among communities of practice is important for collaboration on complex projects. Model reuse is important because it minimizes the need to “re-invent the wheel” for each new project or initiative. Finally, the need to rapidly integrate disparate models together is critical for accurate evaluation of multidisciplinary systems and for evaluating different system/mission concepts and architectural variants. Phoenix Integration proposes to address these challenges by developing an analysis model sharing platform similar to GitHub, a successful software development collaboration system. This platform will be easy-to-use, web-based, and built on the Git version control system. Modifications will be made to tailor the Git repository system to version control analysis models and workflows. This model-sharing platform will have provision for documentation, tags and metadata, which includes a software dependencies list and supported OS. Shared analyses and workflows would be easily run in ModelCenter® and Jupyter notebooks. It will rely on cloud computing resources with on-demand provisioning and execute the analyses and workflows on them when requested. Additionally, published analyses and workflows would be verified automatically whenever supporting software versions change.
A successful project will help NASA further advance the MBE vision and help enable more comprehensive, broader, and deeper modeling efforts across all of NASA’s programs. Specifically, the project will help NASA to share engineering models and workflows across teams, organizational boundaries, and among communities of practice. These capabilities will directly benefit ongoing and future NASA projects and initiatives, such as the Mars 2020 and Europa Clipper missions. It will also be invaluable to foster collaboration across the NASA Centers.
The proposed research will benefit all organizations involved in the analysis and design of complex systems, products, or missions. Government agencies such as the US Air Force and US Navy will benefit as they design the next generation air and sea-based vehicles. Commercial organizations such as Northrup Grumman and Boeing will also benefit from the project as MBE activities become more common.