The InterUSS Platform, an initiative by the Linux Foundation, was established with the objective of improving the interoperability of UTM/U-space systems by connecting companies and organisations active in the ecosystem. Since its inception, the initiative has relied on open-source tools with a strong commitment to transparency.
To ensure quality and compliance, InterUSS Platform adopts a multi-layered approach of checks and balances with ongoing peer reviews, industry-standard testing and alignment to existing regulatory requirements.
The Governance Framework of the InterUSS Platform
The governance structure of the InterUSS Platform is outlined in the InterUSS Charter. The governance is distributed among four bodies: the Governing Board, the Outreach Committee, the Advisory Council and the Technical Steering Committee.
- The Governing Board is responsible for the overall management of the budget, overseeing community outreach, establishing boards and subcommittees and establishing policies and rules, determining the selection of InterUSS projects.
- The Technical Steering Committee (TSC) is responsible for the open collaborative development of the Platform, including documentation, testing, integration and the creation of any items that aid in the development, deployment, operation or adoption of InterUSS Platform’s projects. The mandate and the rules governing the Technical Steering Committee are defined in the Technical Steering Committee Charter.
- The Outreach Committee (OC) is responsible for the design, development, and execution of community outreach and ensures that the work of the InterUSS Platform is clear, well-promoted, and highly visible among the community and potential partners.
- The Advisory Council (AC) was launched in 2024 to establish a voluntary consortium that provides input on regulations and standards for the development of the InterUSS Platform’s open-source tools.
Governing Board
Technical Steering Committee
Our approach: a transparent and secure management system
The InterUSS Platform uses several communication and collaborative tools to ensure the open and transparent development of its projects and the reception of technical contributions. At the same time, it ensures that any changes proposed and implemented are dutifully identified, reviewed and tracked.
InterUSS hosts its project source codes, manuals and necessary documentation on GitHub, which also represents the main collaborative tool of the platform. The InterUSS GitHub configuration prohibits changes to the InterUSS repositories unless reviewed by Committers, who are approved by the Technical Steering Committee based on their demonstrated expertise. When Contributors (Submitters) submit changes to adopt in repository artefacts, only Committers can accept and merge changes into the repositories.
InterUSS has put in place a series of security measures to ensure software quality control and a structured process to access and modify InterUSS resources. These include:
- Development Practices, which include information on the contributing process, release process, and governance/charter
- General and Python style guides, detailing best practices for adding and modifying content
- Continuous Integration documentation, describing the automated test that must be passed for a pull request to be merged into the main branch.
- The GitHub feature Dependabot, adopted by the InterUSS Platform to monitor repositories and run vulnerability checks, automatically generating Pull Requests for identified issues
- The GitHub code-scanning feature analyzes the code in a GitHub repository to find security vulnerabilities and coding errors
- InterUSS also relies on the GitHub security measures, such as the Role Based Access Controls (RBAC), which govern the access to repositories restricted to Committers, and control of settings granted only to administrators (Technical Steering Committee Chair and Linux Foundation administrators).
InterUSS Platform Software Assurance and Requirements
InterUSS has developed automated testing tools that help U-space Service Providers (USSPs)/UTM Service Providers and competent authorities comply with standards and regulations, even across multiple systems.
Standard and regulatory requirements that are candidates for testing via the InterUSS automated test are documented in the requirements repository, which includes requirements from standards and unique regulatory requirements.
The Standards and Regulations repository lists standards and regulations that the monitoring tools help comply with. Requests to add compliance testing for requirements are documented as InterUSS issues and are reviewed by the TSC; the criteria for accepting changes include alignment to the product roadmap and support for testing automation.
The design and implementation of the tools are based on the automated testing approach, including the need for simulated systems (mocks) and interfaces, test scenarios, test cases, test steps, and checks and the required supporting data (resources, configuration). Tested requirements are referenced in the relevant test scenarios and test checks, and in the test reports generated for each execution of the automated test. The documented automated testing approach defines the “requirements” of the automated test.
The reliability of our virtual testing tools
The InterUSS Platform provides access to comprehensive documentation that substantiates the reliability of its automated test tools in producing valid evidence of correct performance with value for real-world applications:
- The Automated testing approach documentation includes measures of success, measures of failures and requirements.
- The document on Design criteria for crafting test scenarios defines the process for creating or modifying test scenarios.
- The Test scenarios document defines scenarios, test cases, steps and checks and the rules for creation.
Test reports provide traceability to tested requirements and demonstrate a USSP’s compliance with a set of requirements. Test reports are described in a series of documents:
- This documentation describes the Test Report types, with links to the folder for each report type.
- The Tested requirements report summarizes a test run’s demonstration of a USSP’s compliance with a set of requirements. It also includes links to the test scenarios, test cases, test steps and test checks that show how the requirement was tested.
- The Sequence View provides a readable description of what happened during a test run.
On their side, the USSPs are responsible for demonstrating that they can correctly and consistently run the automated tests with the proper configurations for their ecosystems. InterUSS provides documentation on configurations and resources.
Validation of InterUSS automated test tools involves several steps:
- Mock Systems: Developers use mock systems and DSS (Discovery and Synchronization Service) to check the automated tests in a local system. This helps them review and ensure the tests are working correctly. Diagnostic tools assist in this process.
- Code Review: Every change to the InterUSS repository, including mock systems, test code and tools must be reviewed by a Committer. This review process includes checking the code, data inputs, and test results, debugging any issues and examining test logs for any irregularities.
- Testing Interfaces: The testing interfaces, for example for NetRID and flight planning, automate communication and actions needed to direct the test scenarios and monitor, record and evaluate the results.
- External Validation: Organizations using the InterUSS automated tests provide additional validation. They report any issues they find, and InterUSS addresses these issues according to their process.
- Consistency in Results: The automated tests have been run against different systems globally and have shown consistent results with the tests run in the local environment.
- Flexibility in Testing: The automated testing framework allows USSPs to choose which tests to run and define specific input data. This flexibility helps them accurately test their own operational environments and objectives.
In summary, the validation process ensures that the automated tests are reliable and consistent, both in local and external environments and provides flexibility for different organizations to tailor the tests to their needs.
