Dependability and Computer Engineering: Concepts for Software-Intensive Systems

Rapid development of digital technologies has led to the widespread use of software in all aspects of our life. The degree of reliance that can be justifiably placed on software-intensive systems is expressed by the notion of dependability. The complexity of modern software-intensive systems poses the greatest threat to dependability. Furthermore, software–the most complex system component–is recognized to be the most error-prone part of the system. Dependability and Computer Engineering: Concepts for Software-Intensive Systems offers a state-of-the-art overview of the dependability research, from engineering various software-intensive systems to validating existing IT-frameworks and solving generic and particular problems related to the dependable use of IT in our society. It is important to understand how dependability is manifested in software-intensive systems, how it is developed, and how it can be enhanced at various levels in systems and organizations. This book uncovers the existing research on the topic as well as the key challenges associated with the engineering of dependable IT systems in the future.

Luigia Petre is a university lecturer at Åbo Akademi University, Department of Information Technologies, Turku, Finland. She got her PhD in Computer Science in 2005 on modeling techniques in formal methods. Her research interests include energy modeling, network availability, integration of formal methods and time and space dependent computing. She has co-organized major conferences in her field such as the Integrated Formal Methods (IFM) 2002 as well as Formal Methods (FM) 2008. She has been in the programme committee of IFM in 2002, 2004, 2005 and 2007. Currently, she is coordinating NODES - a Nordic Dependability Network, concerned with deploying a dependability curriculum for the Nordic countries. She is a researcher in the EC-funded project DEPLOY. She has about 30 refereed publications.

Kaisa Sere is a Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at Åbo Akademi University since 1997. She got her PhD in 1990 on the formal design of parallel algorithms from Åbo Akademi University. Between 1993-97, she was Associate Professor in Computer Science at University of Kuopio. She is the founder and leader of the Distributed Systems Laboratory that contains about 25 researchers. Her current research interests are within the design of dependable distributed systems, especially refinement-based approaches to the construction of systems ranging from pure software to hardware and digital circuits. Her research has been supported by the Academy of Finland as well as by the EU framework programmes 5 to 7 with several grants. She has organised several summer schools, conferences and workshops within her research areas. She was the vice chair of the Council of Natural and Engineering Sciences at the Academy of Finland (1.1.2004-1.12.2009). Kaisa Sere has more than 100 refereed publications.

Elena Troubitsyna is an Academy Research Fellow at the Academy of Finland. She got her PhD in Computer Science in 2000 on design methods for dependable systems. Her research interests include application of formal methods to development of dependable fault tolerant systems. She also conducts research on combining formal methods with informal techniques of safety analysis and semi-formal design techniques such as UML. She has worked on applying formal methods to development of an industrial fault-tolerant system within EU IST projects MATISSE, RODIN and DEPLOY.