The Application of Formal Software Engineering Methods to the Unattended and Remote Monitoring Software Suite at Los Alamos National Laboratory

Conference · Fri Jun 12 04:00:00 EDT 2009

OSTI ID:989784

Determan, John Clifford ^[1]; Longo, Joseph F. ^[1]; Michel, Kelly D. ^[1]

---

1. Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)

The Unattended and Remote Monitoring (UNARM) system is a collection of specialized hardware and software used by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to institute nuclear safeguards at many nuclear facilities around the world. The hardware consists of detectors, instruments, and networked computers for acquiring various forms of data, including but not limited to radiation data, global position coordinates, camera images, isotopic data, and operator declarations. The software provides two primary functions: the secure and reliable collection of this data from the instruments and the ability to perform an integrated review and analysis of the disparate data sources. Several years ago, the team responsible for maintaining the software portion of the UNARM system began the process of formalizing its operations. These formal operations include a configuration management system, a change control board, an issue tracking system, and extensive formal testing, for both functionality and reliability. Functionality is tested with formal test cases chosen to fully represent the data types and methods of analysis that will be commonly encountered. Reliability is tested with iterative, concurrent testing where up to five analyses are executed simultaneously for thousands of cycles. Iterative concurrent testing helps ensure that there are no resource conflicts or leaks when multiple system components are in use simultaneously. The goal of this work is to provide a high quality, reliable product, commensurate with the criticality of the application. Testing results will be presented that demonstrate that this goal has been achieved and the impact of the introduction of a formal software engineering framework to the UNARM product will be presented.

• Research Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), Nuclear Criticality Safety Program (NCSP)
• DOE Contract Number: AC52-06NA25396
• OSTI ID: 989784
• Report Number(s): LA-UR--09-03479; LA-UR--09-3479
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING
98 NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT, SAFEGUARDS, AND PHYSICAL PROTECTION
CAMERAS
COMPUTERS
CONFIGURATION
CRITICALITY
IAEA
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
LANL
MANAGEMENT
MONITORING
NUCLEAR FACILITIES
Nuclear Criticality Safety Program (NCSP)
RADIATIONS
RELIABILITY
SAFEGUARDS
Software Engineering Framework
TESTING
Testing Results
Unattended and Remote Monitoring (UNARM)