Completed Projects
Since its formation in 1983, CSR has been involved in a wide range of high profile and widely acclaimed research projects, most of which form the basis of its current research activities. Below is a list of the completed projects, beginning with the most recently completed ones:
PRICES (PRoductivity, Integrity, and Capability Enhancement for Software)
Duration: 1994 - Feb. 1997
Funding Source: EPSRC, Safety-Critical Systems Programme (Project Monitoring
Officer: Stan Price), IED4/1/9202
Funding to CSR: TBA
Partners: Lloyd's Register (leading partner), Analysis International, BAeSEMA, GP-Elliott Electronic Systems, Rolls Royce Plc., Nuclear Electric, Open University, City University (involved through CMIM (Centre for Measurement and Information in Medicine, PI: Prof. Ewart Carson) and CSR (PI: Peter Mellor)).
Synopsis: Programmable Electronic Systems (PES) are increasingly used in safety-related applications, bringing with them the need for software of high integrity. At the same time, it is essential that the cost of producing software to the high standards required is affordable in the relevant market. The overall aim of the project was to produce advice and guidance for the developers of such systems to enable them to improve both the productivity of their development process and the integrity of the software being produced. The project studied the available techniques and standards, human interaction in the software development process, and the optimisation of human resources, tools and methods. The main deliverables were D29 "Code of Practice", D30 Theoretical Justification Part A "Human Error in the Development of Safety-Critical Software" and Part B (dealing with other aspects), and a distance learning package to assist in the dissemination of the results. CSR contributed mainly in the study of tools and methods, and in the assessment of integrity.
Contact: Peter Mellor (p.mellor@csr.city.ac.uk), Prof. Ewart Carson (E.R.Carson@city.ac.uk), M. Falla (main contact point for obtaining copies of deliverables, full address TBA)
REQUEST
Funding source: ESPRIT - 1
Contact: Peter Mellor (p.mellor@csr.city.ac.uk)
DATUM (Dependability Assessment of Safety Critical Systems Through the Unification of Measurable Evidence).
Duration: Jan 1993 - July 1996
Funding source: the UK Safety Critical Systems Research Programme supported by the
EPSRC and DTI.
Grant Number: GR/H89944 (project number IED4/19314)
Partners: Lloyd's Register of Shipping, Royal Holloway College, CHCID (City
University).
Funding to CSR: £196,000 (total value £477,000)
Contact at CSR: Norman Fenton (n.fenton@dcs.qmw.ac.uk)
Synopsis: Tackling the problem of how to integrate diverse types and sources of evidence into a software safety case. Bayesian approach adopted. Novel work in applying Bayesian nets and multi-criteria decision aid. Major case studies.
SHIP (Safety of Hazardous Industrial Processes in the presence of design faults).
Duration: 1993-1995.
Funding source: CEC ENVIRONMENT programme (DG XII).
Partners: Adelard (UK), IEI-CNR (Pisa, Italy), VTT (Finland), Corelis Technology
(France), ENEA (Rome, Italy).
Funding to CSR: 178kECU (Total value of project, 600kECU)
Contact at CSR: Bev Littlewood (b.littlewood@csr.city.ac.uk)
Synopsis: Hazardous industrial processes are of increasing social concern, and need adequate means for judging their safety. As industrial systems become more complex, this becomes increasingly difficult. Complexity increases the risks of both random component failures and design-related failures. Random plant failures can be mitigated by incorporating redundancy in plant design. Design faults cannot be mitigated in the same way (as the design fault would be common to redundant components), so design faults may become the dominant factor affecting the safety of complex plant.
In some industries, such as aerospace, railways, and nuclear power, quantified safety targets are set for plant. For random hardware failures there are well-established techniques for quantifying the reliability and safety implications. The assessment of the impact of design faults is more difficult. The main problem with quantification is that we do not know, in advance, what design faults remain in the plant so it is difficult to quantify the impact on safety.
The overall objective of SHIP was to devise a means of assessing, ideally numerically, the achieved reliability or safety of a system in the presence of design faults, and hence improve current industrial practice for safety assessment. This problem was tackled from an unusual viewpoint. In software, all failures arise from design faults. So the SHIP project investigated a range of software engineering techniques for minimising and estimating failures to see if they could be applied to industrial plant. As a secondary objective we were also interested in whether plant-level engineering techniques could improve existing software methods.
PDCS (Predictably Dependable Computer Systems).
Duration: PDCS 1989-1991; PDCS2 Aug 1992-Oct 1995
Funding source: PDCS ESPRIT Basic Research Action projects. PDCS2 CEC
ESPRIT 2 under Basic Research Action Programme.
Partners - PDCS: University of Newcastle (U.K.); University of York (U.K.); LAAS-CNRS (France), Toulouse; IEI-CNR (Italy); Technische Universit„t Wien (Austria); Chalmers University (Sweden)
Partners - PDCS 2 IEI-CNR (Italy), Universit„t Karlsruhe (Germany), LAAS-CNRS (France), Newcastle University (U.K.), Universit‰ Paris-Sud (France), Technische Universit„t Wien (Austria), University of York (U.K.).
Funding to CSR: PDCS2: 378 kECU (total project value 1.9 mECU); PDCS: 290 kECU
(total project value 1.7 mECU)
Contact: Bev Littlewood (b.littlewood@csr.city.ac.uk)
Synopsis: The PDCS2 project, as its acronym implies, aimed to continue the work of ESPRIT Basic Research Action 3092 (Predictably Dependable Computing Systems) on the problems of making the process of designing and constructing adequately dependable computing systems much more predictable and cost-effective. In particular it addressed the problems of producing dependable distributed real-time systems, and especially those where the planned programme of research concerned various topics in fault prevention, fault tolerance, fault removal and fault forecasting.
Further information on PDCS and PDCS2
SMARTIE (Standards and Methods Assessed using Rigorous Techniques in Industrial Environments).
Duration: Nov 1990- April 1995.
Funding source: the UK Systems Engineering Programme supported by the EPSRC and
DTI.
Grant Number: GR/F98550 (Project number IED4/1/2160)
Partners: British Rail, Brameur Ltd, Secure Information Systems Ltd, Praxis,
Programming Research Ltd
Funding to CSR: £180,000 (from EPSRC) Nov 1990- March 1994, £16,000 (from DTI)
April 1994-April 1995 (total value of project £690,000)
Contact: Norman Fenton (n.fenton@dcs.qmw.ac.uk)
Synopsis: SMARTIE developed a measurement-based framework for assessing software engineering standards and methods. 250 software standards were reviewed. The framework was applied to 3 major industrial projects, including studies of impact of SSADM and formal methods.
WORMS (Workshops On Reliability and Measurement of Software).
Duration: Oct 1992 Oct 1994.
Funding source: CEC Human Capital and Mobility Programme.
Funding to CSR: 47,000 ECU
Contact: Norman Fenton (n.fenton@dcs.qmw.ac.uk)
Synopsis: Support for young European researchers to attend two CSR workshops. In 1993 we funded 18 researchers to attend the CSR workshop on `Software Quality Assurance and Metrics' in Amsterdam. In 1994 we funded 17 researchers to attend the CSR worshop on 'Software Evolution' in Ireland.
SCOPE (Software Certification Programme in Europe).
Duration: 1989-1994.
Funding source: ESPRIT 2
Partners: Verilog (France), Etnoteam (Italy), Electronic Centralen (Germany), GMD
(Germany), UKAEA, GRS (Germany), ERIA, Strathclyde University, Glasgow College, NIHE
(Ireland).
Funding to CSR: 614 kECU (total project value: 16 mECU)
Contact: Bev Littlewood (b.littlewood@csr.city.ac.uk)
Synopsis: The aim of SCOPE was to support supplier/customer relationships by
facilitating product certification, to assist customers in the selection of IT products
and clarify the legal position of suppliers. A ten-step model for software product
assessment was designed, which was the basis of the Evaluators Guide and the Evaluation
Module Development Guide documents (editor VERILOG) for ISO/IEC 9126.
Individual partners now offer evaluation services, and a club (SCOPE-ISPE, SCOPE
Initiative for Software Product Evaluation) has been set up by some of the SCOPE partners
to maintain some level of harmonisation with the evaluation services offered and to act
towards the conditions of actual certification.
More information is
available on-line.
QUANTUM - Measurement based framework for software quality assurance:
DTI funded project with prime contractor Praxis. CSR provided key consultancy.
TRUST (Testing for Reliability Using Systematic Techniques)
Duration: 1986-89
Funding source: ESPRIT
Partners: University of Liverpool; Liverpool Data Research Associates Ltd; Software
Engineering Services GmbH, Munich; John Bell Systems Ltd
Funding to CSR: £98,000
Improving System Reliability Prediction using Bayesian Nets
Duration: Oct 1996 - Feb 1997
Funding source:Defence Research Agency (Churtsey) - Grant Number: LSF/E20173
Partners: DRA
Funding to CSR: £25,000
Contact at CSR: Norman Fenton
(n.fenton@dcs.qmw.ac.uk)
Synopsis: This is the first phase of a project to produce a Bayesian net based tool for improving the reliability predictions of complex vehicles. In this phase CSR is produce a detailed specification, together with sample nets.
Software Diversity
Duration: Sept 1995 - Jan 1996
Funding source:Scottish Nuclear
Partners: Bristol University
Funding to CSR: £12,500
Contact at CSR: Bev Littlewood (b.littlewood@csr.city.ac.uk)
Synopsis: Small consultancy project to help define, with Bristol University, a programme of research in measuring software diversity and its impact on reliability.
Evaluation of Software Development.
Duration: Oct 1994-Sept 1995.
Funding source: U.K. MoD (Ministry of Defence)
Funding: to City University RISK Consortium ú 48,200
Contact: Norman Fenton (n.fenton@dcs.qmw.ac.uk)
Synopsis: This project proposed pragmatic means to help MoD analyse requirement specs with regard to likely impact on reliability and maintainability. Proposed measures to help MoD track reliability and maintainability
Mathematical Foundations of Software Metrics
Duration: March 1989 - June 1991
Funding Source: NATO
Partners: Iowa State University, Kansas State University, Colorado State
University, South Bank University
Funding to CSR: £10,000
Contact: Norman Fenton (n.fenton@dcs.qmw.ac.uk)
Synopsis: Funded travel between UK and USA for 3 meetings involving Norman Fenton (CSR), Robin Whitty (South Bank), Jim Bieman (Colorado State University), Al Baker (Iowa State), Austin Melton and Dave Gustafson (Kansas State University). The meetings led to the definition of a measurement theory framework for software metrics definitions and validation. The group involved has since been called the Grubstake group, and its work has been widely cited as the Grubstake philosophy.
Software Quality and Metrics
Duration: Feb. 1989 - March 1990
Funding source: British Telecom
Partners: British Telecom
Funding to CSR: £30,000
Contact: Norman Fenton (n.fenton@dcs.qmw.ac.uk)
Synopsis: We were funded to provide input to BT's evolving software quality assurance and measurement programme. In particular we provided specific guidelines on setting up their metrics programme.
Software Reliability Modelling
Duration: 1985-1988 and 1986-90
Funding source: U.K. Alvey project
Project Code: ALV/PRJ/SE/072
Partners 1985-1989:City University only
Partners 1986-1990: City University (CSR) with GEC, British Aerospace, National
Centre of Systems Reliability, Logica, GEC Software, Trent Polytechnic, ICL, University of
Newcastle upon Tyne
Funding to CSR 1986-1990 £750,000
Contact: Peter Mellor (p.mellor@csr.city.ac.uk)
Synopsis: As the title suggests, the objective of this project was to advance our ability to model and measure the reliability of software. An important part of this was an attempt to improve the ability of the then current software reliability growth models to give measures and predictions of reliability that could be trusted by a user. A serious problem with the reliability models was that although there are many of these in the literature, a potential user cannot trust a particular one to be better than others in giving accurate reliability predictions. Indeed, it is not even possible to match a model to a source of failure data a priori in order to be confident of the accuracy of the predictions. A major achievement was our development of several diagnostic techniques for predictive accuracy, which allow a user to fit many models to a particular data source and select the one (or more) that is giving accurate results. It is now generally possible, therefore, to obtain reliability predictions and know that they are accurate.
Software Reliability Modelling Study
Funding source: Alvey Commission
Project Code: ALV/PRJ/SE/045
Funding: £24,000
Duration: 3 years (1st Feb. 1985 to 31st Jan. 1988)
Principle Investigator: Peter Mellor
Contact:Peter Mellor(p.mellor@csr.city.ac.uk)
Synopsis: The objectives of the project were to investigate and improve software reliability models capable of handling "failure count" data, the assessment of their predictive accuracy, and the investigation of their behaviour in long-term prediction.
In pursuit of these objectives, prototype software packages were developed to analyse data sets of the "failure count" variety using software reliability growth models, to generate simulated data sets, and to instrument code in order to analyse software execution profiles and perform "recapture debugging" experiments.
The scope of the project was widened to include the definition of procedures, standards and tools for software reliability data collection (in particulr the definition of a database structure for the storage and extraction of such data), a state-of-the-art survey of methods of software reliability achievement and assessment, surveys of existing standards in the field, and the definitions of terms.
Ten papers and reports were produced, and the results of the project were fed into subsequent projects such as the Alvey Software Reliability Modelling Project ALV/PRJ/SE/072, the ESPRIT-I projects TRUST and REQUEST, and the ESPRIT-II project SCOPE and its supporting projects.
Statistical Modelling of Software Reliability
Duration: 1981-89
Funding source: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, USA.
Partners: George Washington University, Washington DC, and later George Mason
University, Virginia
Funding to CSR: $150,000
Synopsis: Work on software reliability growth modelling, and probabilistic models
for software design diversity and fault tolerance.
Reliability modelling of large software systems
Duration: 1983-1986
Funding source: Research grant from ICL Limited
Funding to CSR: £60,000
Synopsis: Support for a postgraduate student, P.Y. Chan, to work on problems of
software reliability modelling
Software reliability modelling study
Funding source: U.K. Alvey Project
Contact: Peter Mellor
(p.mellor@csr.city.ac.uk)