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International Conference on Computer Safety, Reliability, and Security

SAFECOMP 2001: Computer Safety, Reliability and Security pp 176–189Cite as

Safety Patterns — The Key to Formal Specification of Safety Requirements

Part of the Lecture Notes in Computer Science book series (LNCS,volume 2187)

Abstract

The use of formal methods increases the trust in the safe operation of software in industrial automation systems. But the use of formal methods in practical software development is rare. One of the reasons lies in the difficulties arising from formal specification of safety requirements by common software engineers who are not experts in logic. In this paper an approach is presented, in which the difficulties are overcame by the use of formal specification patterns. The main advantage in comparison to other approaches is that the specification patterns transfer expert knowledge. Therefore this approach not only helps in using formal methods, it also supports in learning the practical application of formal specification languages for safety requirements specification. The patterns are called “safety patterns” because they are developed for the formal specification of requirements special in context of safety.

This work was sponsored by the German Research Council (DFG) within the scope of the focus area program (1064) on the “Integration of Specification Techniques with Applications in Engineering”

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Industrial Automation and Software Engineering, University of Stuttgart, Pfaffenwaldring 47, 70550, Stuttgart, Germany

    Friedemann Bitsch

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  1. Friedemann Bitsch
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe, Institut für Angewandte Informatik, Postfach 3640, 76021, Karlsruhe, Germany

    Udo Voges

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Bitsch, F. (2001). Safety Patterns — The Key to Formal Specification of Safety Requirements. In: Voges, U. (eds) Computer Safety, Reliability and Security. SAFECOMP 2001. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 2187. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45416-0_18

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45416-0_18

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