Related papers: What Causes a System to Satisfy a Specification?
Constraint Programming (CP) has proved an effective paradigm to model and solve difficult combinatorial satisfaction and optimisation problems from disparate domains. Many such problems arising from the commercial world are permeated by…
We describe recent research on the use of actual causality in the definition of responsibility scores as explanations for query answers in databases, and for outcomes from classification models in machine learning. In the case of databases,…
This paper analyzes the notion of causality in a conceptual model, mainly as applied in software engineering. Conceptual system modeling can be considered a three-level process that begins with building a static structural description to…
We study the connection of two problems within the planning and verification community: Conformant planning and model-checking of hyperproperties. Conformant planning is the task of finding a sequential plan that achieves a given objective…
Usually, methods evaluating system reliability require engineers to quantify the reliability of each of the system components. For series and parallel systems, there are some options to handle the estimation of each component's reliability.…
Software developers and maintainers need to read and understand source programs and other software artifacts. The increase in size and complexity of software drastically affects several quality attributes, especially understandability and…
Testing has become an indispensable activity of software development, yet writing good and relevant tests remains a quite challenging task. One well-known problem is that it often is impossible or unrealistic to test for every outcome, as…
Early stages of system development involve outlining desired features such as functionality, availability, or usability. Specifications are derived from these features that concretize vague ideas presented in natural languages. The…
We wish to measure the information coverage of an ad hoc retrieval algorithm, that is, how much of the range of available relevant information is covered by the search results. Information coverage is a central aspect for retrieval,…
Justifying the correct implementation of the non-functional requirements (e.g., safety, security) of mission-critical systems is crucial to prevent system failure. The later could have severe consequences such as the death of people and…
System development is not a linear, one-shot process. It proceeds through refinements and revisions. To support assurance that the system satisfies its requirements, it is desirable that continuous verification can be performed after each…
Model checking and testing are two areas with a similar goal: to verify that a system satisfies a property. They start with different hypothesis on the systems and develop many techniques with different notions of approximation, when an…
Several complexity metrics are described which are related to logic structure, data structure and size of spreadsheet models. They primarily concentrate on the dispersion of cell references and cell paths. Most metrics are newly defined,…
We study the problem of generating a test sequence that achieves maximal coverage for a reactive system under test. We formulate the problem as a repeated game between the tester and the system, where the system state space is partitioned…
Emergence and causality are two fundamental concepts for understanding complex systems. They are interconnected. On one hand, emergence refers to the phenomenon where macroscopic properties cannot be solely attributed to the cause of…
Ensuring safe operation of safety-critical complex systems interacting with their environment poses significant challenges, particularly when the system's world model relies on machine learning algorithms to process the perception input. A…
High-quality requirements minimize the risk of propagating defects to later stages of the software development life cycle. Achieving a sufficient level of quality is a major goal of requirements engineering. This requires a clear definition…
The great majority of engineered products are subject to thermo-mechanical loads which vary with the product environment during the various phases of its life-cycle (machining, assembly, intended service use...). Those load variations may…
Conformal Prediction (CP) is a popular method for uncertainty quantification with machine learning models. While conformal prediction provides probabilistic guarantees regarding the coverage of the true label, these guarantees are agnostic…
Most parameterized complexity classes are defined in terms of a parameterized version of the Boolean satisfiability problem (the so-called weighted satisfiability problem). For example, Downey and Fellow's W-hierarchy is of this form. But…