1. A method for inferring system-level properties, comprising: maintaining a system model having a number of levels of abstraction, the system model including: a number of physical system components within a component hierarchy; and a number of control functions at different levels of abstraction within a control hierarchy; providing a number of mission requirements; providing a number of system-level properties; mapping at least one of the number of system-level properties to one or more of the number of control functions; mapping at least one of the system-level properties to one or more of the number of physical system components; generating a constraint model from the system model, the number of mission requirements, and the number of system-level properties; and reasoning across the constraint model to determine whether one or more of the number of system-level properties mapped to the one or more of the number of control functions and to the one or more of the number of physical system components are satisfied in response to one or more particular adjustments to: the number of mission requirements; the number of system-level properties; the system model; the number of physical system components; and the number of control functions.