Experimenting with the MBSA methodology using the AltaRica language

The rise of IT and embedded systems has revolutionized the business models of many industries. The space industry is no exception: new needs are emerging, including the demand for low-cost connectivity, both for businesses and individuals. For example, the satellite telecommunications market is diversifying, with the industry offering solutions based on fleets or constellations of satellites of various sizes, in response to changing needs.

However, this transformation is not without technical consequences: the systems developed by Thales Alenia Space are becoming increasingly complex, while at the same time performing more and more critical functions. To meet this challenge, the field of operational safety must adapt by developing appropriate engineering tools. This is all the more the case as the tools used by reliability specialists, such as Petri nets, Markov chains and fault trees, are increasingly ill-suited to the product development process: although powerful, the resulting models are often difficult to reuse, and poorly adapted to changes in assumptions, which are frequent during the course of a study. What's more, these tools require expertise to correctly interpret the resulting models, which sometimes leads to difficulties in interdisciplinary sharing. It is this growing complexity, and the hope of responding to these observations, that has led the safety and reliability expertise teams to take an interest in the MBSA methodology.

The MBSA methodology consists of developing a functional model of the system, proposed here using the AltaRica 3.0 language, and then using the power of the IT tool to automate various calculations used in the field of operational safety.

The aim of this article is to study the viability of the MBSA methodology for the space sector, by testing it on a typical simplified application case, using the AltaRica language. The analysis of the results and the degree of difficulty with which they were obtained should provide an initial basis for reflection on the effectiveness of this methodology in meeting the need for adaptability in the field of dependability.