A Generic Framework for the Engineering of Self-Adaptive and Self-Organising Systems

Abstract

This paper provides a unifying view for the engineering of self-adaptive (SA) and self-organising (SO) systems. We first identify requirements for designing and building trustworthy self-adaptive and self-organising systems. Second, we propose a generic framework combining design-time and run-time features, which permit the definition and analysis at design-time of mechanisms that both ensure and constrain the run-time behaviour of an SA or SO system, thereby providing some assurance of its self-* capabilities. We show how this framework applies to both an SA and an SO system, and discuss several current proof-of-concept studies on the enabling technologies.