City, University of London, United Kingdom

Profile

The City, University of London is a leading global University committed to academic excellence, focused on business and the professions and based in London, U.K.

The team from the Centre for Software Reliability (CSR), a research centre in the Department of Computer Science in the School of Mathematics, Computer Science and Engineering, represents the University in the consortium.

Relevant expertise

CSR’s research and consultancy cover quantitative assessment of reliability, safety, performance and security, using empirical and/or model-based methods, and rigorous integration of evidence from diverse methods (CSR pioneered the use of Bayesian networks in this application). Its applied work covers a broad range of applications – from safety-critical and embedded systems (e.g. nuclear power) to critical infrastructure to enterprise systems, such as replicated heterogeneous database servers. Its research deals with both malicious and accidental risk (security and dependability), as exemplified in a number of EU and national projects (see examples below).

Besides operating on probabilistic models with various tools, we have built front-ends that support rapid specification of complex models by application experts without deep knowledge of the specialist tools. Our dissemination activities include scientific publications and tutorials for industry. CSR has extensive experience of collaborative projects with all the other major European research centres in dependability, and with many industrial companies.

Main tasks

As part of our joint work in SESAMO we identified common interests and complementary skills, which offer scope for useful collaboration in the area of co-engineering for safety, security and performance. INTECS’s competence with SysML model-based development offers a complementary skill set to our main strength – probabilistic modelling for resilience assessment.

Again as part of our joint work in SESAMO we identified synergies between the two teams. The Medini Analyze tool, developed by KMT, captures in great detail the process development including important techniques, such as fault/attack-tree analysis (FTA), and failure modes and effect analysis (FMEA). Scope for including state-based probabilistic techniques exists and we look forward to exploring it in AQUAS.