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The 2020 Expert Survey on Formal Methods

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Formal Methods for Industrial Critical Systems (FMICS 2020)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 12327))

  • The original version of this chapter was revised: The structuring of the author names with regard to the particle has been corrected. A correction to this chapter can be found at https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58298-2_14

Abstract

Organised to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the FMICS international conference, the present survey addresses 30 questions on the past, present, and future of formal methods in research, industry, and education. Not less than 130 high-profile experts in formal methods (among whom three Turing award winners and many recipients of other prizes and distinctions) accepted to participate in this survey. We analyse their answers and comments, and present a collection of 111 position statements provided by these experts. The survey is both an exercise in collective thinking and a family picture of key actors in formal methods.

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Change history

  • 10 February 2024

    A correction has been published.

Notes

  1. 1.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Likert_scale.

  2. 2.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LimeSurvey.

  3. 3.

    https://arxiv.org/corr/subjectclasses.

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Acknowledgements

We heartily thank all our colleagues who participated in the survey. This includes all those whose position statement appears in Sect. 9. Thanks also are due to those experts who took the time to answer our questionnaire, but did not provide a position statement, namely Bernhard Aichernig, Roderick Bloem, Arne Borälv, Rocco De Nicola, Cindy Eisner, Dimitra Giannakopoulou, Georges Gonthier, Susanne Graf, Aarti Gupta, Thomas Henzinger, Holger Hermanns, Michael Hinchey, César Muñoz, Tobias Nipkow, Joël Ouaknine, Charles Pecheur, Alastair Reid, Ina Schieferdecker, and Jim Woodcock. Finally, we are grateful to Nicolas Amat, Pierre Bouvier, Alessio Ferrari, Arnd Hartmanns, Ajay Krishna, Rom Langerak, Lina Marsso, Franco Mazzanti, and Wendelin Serwe, who tested four successive beta-versions of our questionnaire and provided us with many wise observations; Pierre Bouvier, Alessio Ferrari, Dejan Ničković, and Wendelin Serwe also proof-checked the author version of the present report.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Univ. Grenoble Alpes, Inria, CNRS, Grenoble INP, LIG, 38000, Grenoble, France

    Hubert Garavel

  2. ISTI–CNR, Pisa, Italy

    Maurice H. ter Beek

  3. Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark

    Jaco van de Pol

  4. University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands

    Jaco van de Pol

Authors
  1. Hubert Garavel
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  2. Maurice H. ter Beek
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  3. Jaco van de Pol
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Hubert Garavel , Maurice H. ter Beek or Jaco van de Pol .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. ISTI, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Pisa, Italy

    Maurice H. ter Beek

  2. AIT Austrian Institute of Technology GmbH, Vienna, Austria

    Dejan Ničković

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Garavel, H., ter Beek, M.H., van de Pol, J. (2020). The 2020 Expert Survey on Formal Methods. In: ter Beek, M.H., Ničković, D. (eds) Formal Methods for Industrial Critical Systems. FMICS 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12327. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58298-2_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58298-2_1

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