in recent years, formal methods have been used as an important tool for performance evaluation and verification of a wide range of systems. in the view points of engineers and practitioners, however, there are still some major difficulties in using formal methods. in this paper, we introduce a new formal modeling language to fill the gaps between object-oriented programming languages (oopls) us...

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...

This paper discusses the advantages and drawbacks of automobile computer systems, especially with respect to dependability. We consider two aspects: specification and validation of dependability objectives, and definition of dependable hardware and software architectures. The second aspect is discussed in more detail, focusing on the integration of the different subsystems into a global compute...

In this paper, the new methodology from areas fault tolerant systems based on automated generation of checkers in FPGA is presented. Dependability models of architectures based on the use of online checkers are described in the paper as well. First, the results of our research in the area of on-line checkers design are described. It is shown how the architectures with on-line checkers can be us...

Reliability is an important concern for software dependability. Quantifying dependability in terms of reliability can be carried out by measuring the continuous delivery of a correct service or, equivalently, of the mean time to failure. The novel contribution of this paper is to provide a means to support reliability design following the principles of the Model Driven Architecture(MDA). By doi...

Critical embedded systems have to provide a high level of dependability. In automotive domain, for example, TDMA protocols are largely recommended because of their deterministic behavior. Nevertheless, under the transient environmental perturbations, the loss of communication cycles may occur with a certain probability and, consequently, the system may fail. This paper analyzes the impact of th...

In order for e-services to work, a certain level of dependability is necessary in the consumers and providers involved. I draw on an unusual source microcredit schemes in order to find ways of promoting this dependability. Microcredit schemes lend money to people who normal banks won't lend to, because they're too poor. However, the default rate on loans from microcredit schemes can be lower th...