Developmental Test, Evaluation and Assessment

About the Office of Developmental Test, Evaluation and Assessment

SERC

Systems Engineering Research Center (SERC)

The Systems Engineering Research Center (SERC), is a University Affiliated Research Center (UARC) of the Department of Defense, leveraging the research and expertise of faculty, researchers, and students from more than 20 collaborating universities throughout the United States (Figure 1). The SERC is unprecedented in the depth and breadth of its reach, leadership, and citizenship in Systems Engineering.

Mission

Begun in 2008 and led by Stevens Institute of Technology, the SERC is a national resource providing a critical mass of systems engineering researchers-a community of broad experience, deep knowledge, and diverse interests. SERC researchers have worked across a wide variety of domains and industries, and bring that wide-ranging wealth of experience and expertise to their research. Establishing such a community of focused SE researchers, while difficult, delivers impact well beyond what any one university could accomplish.

The SERC Trusted Systems research area focuses on the development of systems approaches to achieving mission assurance and trust in dynamic environments that include cyber-physical-human systems of systems.
In partnership with DTE&A, SERC researchers have developed measures and metrics to support developmental test and evaluation (DTE) for operational resilience. Operational resilience may be defined as the ability of systems to resist, absorb, and recover from or adapt to an adverse occurrence during operation that may cause harm, destruction, or loss of ability to perform mission-related functions. While the focus of much of this work is resilience of weapons systems or other cyber-physical systems with respect to cyber-attack, the principal findings can be applied to operational resilience broadly defined. (Figure 2). Related SERC projects include:

WRT-1022 Developmental Test and Evaluation (DT&E) and Cyberattack Resilient Systems
- Principal Investigator: Dr. Peter A. Beling, Virginia Tech National Security Institute
- SERC Report for WRT-1022
WRT-1072: Measurable Requirements for Operational Resilience
- Principal Investigator: Dr. Peter A. Beling, Virginia Tech National Security Institute
- Final Presentation for WRT-1072