Editorial

Formal Aspects of Computing

is devoted to the best papers presented at the third ERCIM workshop on Formal Methods for Industrial Critical Systems (FMICS98), held at the CWI in Amsterdam.

The FMICS workshops are intended to bring together scientists who are active in the area of formal methods and who are interested in exchanging their experiences in industrial usage of these methods. They also aim at the promotion of research and development for the improvement of the theory and their tools for industrial applications.

We are satisfied to see that time and again, the application of these methods clarifies the structure and inner workings of many systems and exposes many mistakes and conceptual errors. We are particularly delighted, as the reader may see when browsing through this special issue, that throughout the years a steady improvement can be observed regarding the size and complexity of systems that are being investigated. We hope and expect that this trend will continue throughout the forthcoming FMICS workshops.

We want to thank all those that have helped in producing this special issue. Especially the program committee, assisted by numerous referees, as well as the authors of the contributions and the participants of the workshop.