Centre for Software Reliability

Prof. Peter Bishop

Current Positions:

• Professor Systems amd Software Dependability
  (shared with Prof. Robin Bloomfield)

Research Interests:

• Software fault tolerance
• Safety cases
• Software reliability
• Software diversity

Background: Peter Bishop is a Professor at the Centre for Software Reliability, sharing a joint chair in Systems and Software Dependability with Robin Bloomfield. He is also a Principal Consultant at Adelard which provides computer safety and dependability consultancy and research services to industry. He has BSc and MSc degrees in Physics and is a Chartered Engineer and Member of the IEE.

Peter Bishop joined City University in 2001, and his research work includes participation in the DISPO2 project, and research on design diversity and software reliability prediction as part of the DIRC project.

At Adelard he is involved in safety critical systems research and consultancy. He was the Adelard team leader in the SHIP international research project on the assessment of hazardous industrial processes. He is also the primary researcher on the QUARC projects funded by the UK nuclear industry. These projects are concerned with the quantification of the reliability in computer-based systems.

He was formerly employed in the research laboratories of the CEGB and National Power. Initially he was involved in the development of process automation systems. In later years his work was primarily concerned with software reliability research and assessment. He was heavily involved in the assessment of the Sizewell B Primary Protection System software and also undertook research into formal specification methods, verification and testing, software diversity and fault tolerance. Most of this research was performed in international collaborations with UK and European partners.

Tel: 020 7040 0274 (from UK), or  +44 20 7040 0274 (outside UK)

E-mail: pgb@csr.city.ac.uk

Some recent publications

• PG Bishop, RE Bloomfield, B Littlewood, A Povyakalo, DR Wright, Toward a Formalism for Conservative Claims about the Dependability of Software-Based Systems, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, pp 708-717, Vol. 37, No. 5, Sept/Oct 2011

• PG Bishop, L Cyra, Overcoming Non-determinism in Testing Smart Devices: A Case Study, pp 237-250, in proceedings 29th International Conference, (SAFECOMP 2010), Vienna, Austria, 14-17 September, 2010, ISSN 0302-9743, Springer Verlag

• Bishop, P., Gashi, I., Littlewood, B., Wright, D.: Reliability Modeling of a 1-Out-Of-2 System: Research with Diverse Off-The-Shelf SQL Database Servers. 18th IEEE International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering (ISSRE 2007). 5-9 of November, Trollhättan, Sweden. 2007, pp. 49-58

• Meulen, M.J.P. van der, Bishop, P.G., Revilla, M., "An Exploration of Software Faults and Failure Behaviour in a Large Population of Programs", ISSRE 2004, Rennes, France, pp. 101-12, 2004.

• Bishop P.G. and Bloomfield R.E., "Using a Log-normal Failure Rate Distribution for Worst Case Bound Reliability Prediction", ISSRE 2003, 17-20 Nov., pp. 237-245, Denver, USA, 2003.

• Bishop, P.G., "Rescaling Reliability Bounds for a New Operational Profile", International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis (ISSTA 2002), July 22-24, (Phyllis G. Frankl, Eds.), vol. 27 (4), pp. 180-190, ACM Software Engineering Notes, Rome, Italy, 2002.

• Bishop, P.G., Bloomfield, R.E., "Worst Case Reliability Prediction Based on a Prior Estimate of Residual Defects", Thirteenth International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering (ISSRE '02), November 12-15, Annapolis, Maryland, USA, pp. 295-303, 2002.

Books

• Bishop, P.G., "Software Fault Tolerance by Design Diversity", chapter in Software Fault Tolerance, (Lyu, M., Eds.), Wiley, USA, Springer, ISBN 0-471-95068-8, 1995

• Bishop P.G. (ed), 1990, Dependability of Critical Computer Applications - 3: Techniques Directory, Elsevier Applied Science, ISBN 1-85166-544-7.