Declarative Lifecycle Management for Self-Adaptive Systems

Abstract Self-adaptive systems can be realised as layered systems with a feedback loop: a managing system monitors a managed system, updates an internal model, and adjusts the managed system by means of controllers to maintain given requirements. For example, a digital twin coupled with its physical twin constitute such a self-adaptive system. As the managed system shifts between different stages in its lifecycle, these requirements, as well as the associated analysers and controllers, may need to change. The exact triggers for such shifts in a managed system are often hard to predict: they may be difficult to describe or even unknown. However, the shifts can generally be observed once they have occurred, in terms of changes in the system behaviour. This paper proposes an automated method for self-adaptation in self-adaptive systems to address shifts between lifecycle stages in a managed system. Our method is based on declarative descriptions of lifecycle stages for assets in a managed system and their associated counterparts in the managing system. Declarative lifecycle management provides a high-level, flexible method of self-adaptation for self-adaptive systems to reflect disruptive shifts between stages in a managed system.