Resilience-by-Design: Challenges and Practitioner Needs in the Design of Resilient Automotive Systems Architectures - Findings from a Qualitative Interview Study

This qualitative study explores the challenges and practitioner needs in designing resilient automotive system architectures, addressing the growing complexity and vulnerability of connected and automated vehicles. Based on a semi-structured qualitative interview with experts across systems engineering, safety, and cybersecurity domains, the study identifies key challenges and expectations for implementing Resilience-by-Design in industrial practice. The findings reveal five critical themes: (1) the lack of standardized process models for the consideration of resilience in the early design phase, (2) limited methods for disruption identification using the systems architecture during early design phase, (3) insufficient evaluation metrics and methodology, like a maturity model, and (4) the absence of integrated toolchains to support resilience measures. These insights are synthesized into four major action fields that define the strategic priorities for enabling Resilience-by-Design: (1) structured development processes, (2) disruption analysis and resilience evaluation methods, and (3) AI-and model-based design tools.