A Research Agenda for Tradespace Exploration and Analysis of Engineered Resilient Systems

This paper describes the activity of a workshop on Data-Driven Tradespace Exploration and Analysis: A Key Technical Thrust of Engineered Resilient Systems (ERS). The workshop was attended by 40 academic, government, and industry researchers and practitioners involved in tradespace exploration for a variety of engineering domains. The one-and-one-half day workshop sought to develop near and far term tradespace technology research recommendations for the ERS Priority Steering Council (PSC) Lead. To determine promising research areas, workshop attendees were asked to describe desired tradespace capabilities, the associated current approach and its deficiencies, and gaps between the two states. These research areas were summarized in statements of need, supporting rationale, and investment timeframe. Resilience in the context of ERS is more than robustness; resilience implies that when the system is placed into an environment in which it was not originally intended to operate, after some degradation in performance, the system can be adapted or reconfigured to perform at its intended levels. To support design for resilience, more alternatives must be generated earlier, considered longer, explored over multiple, dynamic alternative futures, and searched exhaustively. The workshop described in this paper was organized to discuss current methods, process, and tools for performing these tradespace analysis related tasks and to better understand existing tradespace capabilities and their suitability for ERS.