A safety case is a well-reasoned argument, supported by evidence that a system is acceptably safe to operate in a particular context. For many, evolving a safety case in step with the design has proved to be an effective means of identifying and addressing safety concerns during a system’s lifecycle. However, ultimately safety cases address only one system attribute safety. Increasingly, the id...

Mechatronic units are characterized by a complex interaction of functions from mechanics, electronics, communication and computer systems. These different fields of technology as well as influences from the operating environment must be reflected in the dependability consideration, for which so far no comprehensive framework exists. In this contribution, a framework for consideration of dependa...

Dependability is a non-functional property that should be assessed early in the software lifecycle. Although several UML profiles exist for quantitative annotations of non-functional properties, none of them provides concrete capabilities for dependability analysis of UML system models. In this paper, we propose a dependability analysis and modeling profile. The objective is twofold: to reuse p...

A new direction in short-range wireless applications has appeared in the form of high-speed data communication devices for distances of hundreds meters. Behind these embedded applications, a complex heterogeneous architecture is built. Moreover, these short range communications are introduced into critical applications, where the dependability/reliability is mandatory. Thus, dependability conce...

This paper focuses on resource management and mobility support in multiple radio environments. The emphasis is on dependability issues, which unavoidably need to be addressed to some extent to cope with malfunctions in such complex environment. With reference to the European project CAUTION++, which aims to build a capacity and network management platform for increased utilization of present an...

UML (Unified Modeling Language) is a standard design notation which offers the state machines diagram to specify reactive software systems. The “Modeling and Analysis of Real-Time and Embedded systems” profile (MARTE) enables UML with capabilities for performance analysis. MARTE has been specialized in a “Dependability Analysis and Modeling” profile (DAM), then providing UML with dependability ...

The dependability of autonomous systems is a particular concern, notably because of the advanced decisional mechanisms and other artificial intelligence techniques on which such systems rely. This paper sets the context of dependability and autonomy, and focuses on two non-exclusive approaches aiming to improve dependability: fault tolerance and robustness. The paper gives definitions of these ...

It is widely agreed that high levels of software system dependability can only be achieved if the system is designed with dependability in mind; security and other dependability properties cannot be “added-on” to an undependable implementation. However, most modern software development methodologies are based on the notion that quality is achieved through incremental improvement. The question t...

Performing dependability evaluation along with other analyses at architectural level allows both making architectural tradeoffs and predicting the effects of architectural decisions on the dependability of an application. This paper gives guidelines for building architectural dependability models for software systems using the AADL (Architecture Analysis and Design Language). It presents reusab...