Science of Computer Programming 128 (2016) 1
Contents lists available atScienceDirect
Science
of
Computer
Programming
www.elsevier.com/locate/scico
Preface
Preface
of
Special
issue
on
Automated
Verification
of
Critical
Systems
(AVoCS’14)
AVoCS2014,the14thInternationalConferenceonAutomatedVerificationofCriticalSystems hasbeenhostedbytheUniversity ofTwente,andhastakenplaceinEnschede,Netherlands,on24–26September,2014.
TheaimoftheAVoCSseriesistocontributetotheinteractionandexchangeofideasamongmembersoftheinternational researchcommunityontoolsandtechniquesfortheverificationofcriticalsystems.Thesubjectistobeinterpretedbroadly andinclusively.It coversall aspects ofautomated verification,includingmodel checking,theorem proving,abstract inter-pretation,and refinement pertainingto various types ofcritical systems(safety-critical, security-critical, business-critical, performance-critical,etc.).
This specialissue presents a selection ofpapers in thisarea ofthe AVoCS series. Afterthe conference, therewas an opencalltocontributetothisspecialissue.Authorsofacceptedpaperswereespeciallyencouragedtosubmitanextended version oftheirpaper.All submittedpapersunderwenta thoroughreviewingprocess,withseveraliterations, whereeach paperwasreviewedbyseveralexternaldomainexperts.Asaresultofthisprocess,outofseveninterestingsubmissions,four high-qualitypaperspresentingdifferentaspectsofautomatedverificationofcriticalsystemswereselectedtobepublished inthisSCPspecialissue.Theselectedpapersallgiveadifferentcontributiontotheautomatedverificationofcriticalsystems. Andrea Bonacchi, AlessandroFantechi, StefanoBacherini,andMatteoTempestini considera highlyrelevant application domainforthe AVoCSseries,namelyrailwayinterlockingsystems,which monitorthestatusofobjectsin arailwayyard. They show how model extraction isused to validate an implementation of such a system, accordingto standard safety guidelines.Inparticular,theextractedmodelisusedfortesting,andalsotoverifyseveralformalproperties.
AliJafari,EhsanKhamespanah,MarjanSirjani,HolgerHermanns,andMatteoCiminiintroducePTRebeca,anactor-based languageforasynchronousmessagepassingwithanotionofprobabilistictime.Theyprovideasemantics,andatoolsetto automaticallygenerateMarkovAutomatonmodels,whichcanbemodelcheckedfor(probabilistic)reachabilityproperties.
JanFrisoGroote,RemcovanderHofstad,andMatthiasRaffelsieperproposeatechniquetoestimatethestatespacesize ofaprogram.TheymodeltheprogramasaCartesianproduct ofanumberofrandom graphs.Thepaperpresentsseveral computationalstudies.Theestimationsobtainedaremoreaccuratethanthestandardestimationtechniquebasedonasingle randomgraph.Thistechniquecouldbeappliedtoestimatetheremainingerrorprobabilityaftercheckingapartofthestate space.
PetrRoˇckai,Ji˘ríBarnat,andLubosBrimpresentanextensionoftheirsoftwaremodelcheckerDIVINEforLLVMprograms, tosupporttheverificationofprogramswithexceptions,whichisanimportantsteptowardsverificationofreal-worldC++ programs.
Finally,wewouldliketothankallauthorsandreviewers.Allreviewerscarefullyreadthepapersandprovided construc-tivefeedbacktoimprovethepapers.Thisfeedbackwascarefullytakenintoaccountbytheauthors.Thisspecialissuewould nothavebeenpossiblewithouttheirefforts.
GuestEditors Marieke Huisman Jaco van de Pol
FormalMethodsandTools,CTIT, UniversityofTwente, TheNetherlands E-mailaddresses:M.Huisman@utwente.nl(M. Huisman),J.C.vandePol@utwente.nl(J. van de Pol)
29 April 2016 Available online 6 May 2016 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.scico.2016.04.013
