AltaRica language
AltaRica is a language born in 1998 from a collaboration between research, mainly at the Laboratoire Bordelais de Recherche en Informatique (LaBRI), and industry. This language, based on formal methods, has been designed and developed for qualitative and quantitative safety analysis. One version of the language, called AltaRica Data-Flow, is implemented in the CECILIA Workshop tool.
History
The development of the AltaRica language began in the late 90s at the Laboratoire Bordelais de Recherche en Informatique (LaBRI).
The reason for creating a new modeling language was to overcome the difficulties encountered by safety analysts (in the aeronautics, nuclear, automotive and oil & gas industries) with “classic” modeling formalisms such as fault trees, Markov chains or stochastic Petri nets.
Three versions of the language coexist: the original “AltaRica LaBRI” language, a version that forces the orientation of flows and erases the acausal character (the same event can lead to different consequences) called “AltaRica Data-Flow” and an evolution of the latter called “AltaRica 3.0”. To date, only AltaRica Data-Flow has been implemented in industrial tools.
Language
AltaRica Data-Flow is a formal language with guarded transitions. States and transitions are modeled in both functional and dysfunctional models, and the implemented logics enable fault propagation.
Static and dynamic analyses of these models can be performed: Boolean equations, sequence generation, model-checking, Monte-Carlo simulation, Markov chains, etc.
The basic principles of AltaRica Data-Flow are as follows:
- component states are modeled (Nominal, Failed)
- transitions represent state changes via discrete events (Failure)
- assertions determine the value of outputs as a function of inputs and the component’s current state: Output = f(Input, State)
The syntax and semantics of the language are defined in the following document:
Publications
Research activities related to the AltaRica language, in all its forms,
have been numerous over the past 25 years.
Here’s a selection:
– The AltaRica Language. In Lydersen and Hansen and Sandtorv ed.,
Proceedings of European Safety and Reliability Conference, ESREL’98. 1998. 1998, A. Griffault, G. Point, A. Rauzy, J.P. Signoret and P. Thomas.
– Model-based diagnosis for avionics systems using minimal cuts. In 22nd International Workshop on Principles of Diagnosis – DX 2011, Allemagne (2011), A. Griffault, S. Gaudan, F. Kuntz, E. Laurent, G. Point and C. Sannino.
– MBSA in Aeronautics: A Way to Support Safety Activities. IMBSA 2022. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 13525. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15842-1_3, C. Frazza, P. Darfeuil, J. Gauthier, J.
– AltaRica : Contribution à l’unification des méthodes formelles et de la Sûreté de fonctionnement. Thèse de l’Université Bordeaux I, 2000, Gérald Point.
– Motifs formels d’architectures de systèmes pour la sûreté de fonctionnement. Thèse de l’Ecole Nationale Supérieure de l’Aéronautique et de l’Espace (SUPAERO), 2005, Christophe Kehren.
– Analyses de sûreté de fonctionnement multi-systèmes. Thèse de l’Université Bordeaux I, 2009, Romain Bernard.
– Symbolic computation of minimal cuts for AltaRica models. Research Report n°1456-11. LaBRI – Université Bordeaux I, Sep. 2011, Alain Griffault, Fabien Kuntz, Gérald Point and Aymeric Vincent.
– Projet S2C (System & Safety Continuity) des IRT Saint-Exupéry et System X.
