Seville hosts LangDev 2024: the aerospace sector and security, key players

This year, Seville hosted the LangDev 2024 conference, an unmissable event for professionals and researchers in the fields of Language Engineering, Model Driven Engineering (MDE) and Domain Specific Languages (DSL). Known for its focus on hands-on demonstrations of software tools, LangDev is the ideal setting to showcase advances in cutting-edge technology.

Seville, with its outstanding cluster of aerospace companies, was the perfect place to host this event, which in this edition placed a special emphasis on the aerospace and security sectors. One of the main objectives of the event was to promote collaboration between industry and academia, creating a meeting point for the exchange of ideas, the alignment of research and the promotion of new partnerships.

LangDev 2024 highlighted the growing importance of Model Driven Engineering (MDE) in driving technological innovation, with clear recognition by the European Union of its role in advancing sectors such as aerospace. Cybersecurity was also a key theme, as the increased sophistication of cyber-attacks requires more advanced tools and processes. LangDev presented the latest modeling and DSL tools designed to improve security and prepare the industry for future challenges.

Elena Alaña Salazar, Head of GMV's Software Engineering Section, and Sergi Company Aguilar, GMV's space systems engineer, presented the paper entitled “Transitioning to MBSE in Space Projects: Insights, Challenges and Lessons Learned”. Their talk focused on the impact of Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) in the space industry, promoted by key organizations such as the European Space Agency (ESA).

MBSE is revolutionizing systems engineering by digitizing the entire process, from Phase 0 / Pre-Phase A (concept development) to Phase F (project closure). However, the transition from traditional approaches to MBSE presents a number of challenges, especially for large organizations with well-established procedures.

Elena and Sergi presented a practical case study based on GMV's experience with MBSE. They reviewed the initial objectives in adopting this methodology, analyzed the company's current situation and outlined future prospects. Throughout the presentation they also showed a chronology of key activities, highlighting how MBSE is being applied in current space projects. In addition, they addressed challenges such as requirements management, document generation automation and cross-project reuse, topics that were the focus of the discussion, especially in relation to the complexity of applying MBSE in large-scale space projects, involving multiple teams.