As technology becomes more advanced, those who design, use and are otherwise a‚ected by it want to know that it will perform correctly, and understand why it does what it does, and how to use it appropriately. In essence they want to be able to trust the systems that are being designed. In this survey we present assurances that are the method by which users can understand how to trust autonomou...

Cloud computing by now has gained wide recognition in business and is becoming increasingly important for consumers. However, consumers experience uncertainties, such as security, privacy, and vendor lock-in. Certifications provide assurances and may mitigate uncertainties, making cloud service certifications a core focus of the European Union’s cloud strategy and various certification programs...

There is worldwide public expectation that responsible governments will protect their citizens from hazards from which they are unable to protect themselves. Meat and dairy products can pose substantial risks, and international trade in these products relies heavily on government-controlled food safety programmes, assurances and certification as to freedom from unacceptable levels of hazards. C...

Most of today’s software systems are large-scaled and have to manage manifold demands. To ease their development, reusable and proven architectural building blocks, for example architectural patterns, are often composed to the desired architecture. Building blocks are specified by their structure and behaviour. Additionally, each architectural building block has specific properties which are in...

Concurrent with the rapid expansion of wireless networks is an increasing interest in providing Quality-of-Service (QoS) support to them. As a consequence, a number of medium access control protocols has been proposed which aims at providing service differentiation at the distributed wireless medium access layer. However, most of them provide only average performance assurances. We argue that a...

This article reports the results from a series of laboratory auction markets in which consumers bid on meat characteristics. The characteristics examined include meat traceability (i.e., the ability to trace the retail meat back to the farm or animal of origin), transparency (e.g., knowing the meat was produced without added growth hormones, or knowing the animal was humanely treated), and extr...