Safety Aspects of Computer Control focuses on the increased usage of computers and safety procedures for the control of their applications. The selection first elaborates on software in safety-related systems, regulatory issues, and legal liability. Topics cover product liability, liability under the contract law, liability under the law of negligence, methods of ensuring safety, some aspects of regulation of software safety, purpose and principles of regulation, and direct regulation. The book then examines standardization efforts worldwide; real-time software requirements specification and animation using extended Petri nets; and independent software verification and validation in practice. Discussions focus on verification and validation principles, organizational principles, specification language, extended Petri nets environment, history of software standards, and standardization work realized through ISO or IEC. The manuscript takes a look at design and licensing of safety-related software, fault-tolerant control for safety, and use and relevance for the development of safety-critical systems. Concerns include formal methods in the safety-critical systems life cycle, random and systematic failures, hardware and systematic failures, and software quality standards. The book is highly recommended for computer science experts and researchers interested in the safety aspects of computer control.

SAFECOMP '92 advances the state-of-the-art, reviews experiences of the past years, considers the guidance now available and identifies the skills, methods, tools and techniques required for the safety of computer control systems.

Safety of Computer Control Systems 1985 (Safecomp '85): Achieving Safe Real Time Computer Systems presents the proceedings of the Fourth IFAC Workshop, held in Como, Italy, on October 1–3, 1985. This book discusses a wide range of topics ranging from direct process control through robotics to operator assistance. Organized into 28 chapters, this compilation of papers begins with an overview of the implementation of atomic actions by means of concurrent programming constructs. This text then examines the safety-related applications that usually demand the provision of redundant resources within the system. Other chapters consider the safe performance of an industrial robot system that relies on several factors. This book discusses as well the increasing demand for Computer Assisted Decision Making (CADM) both in engineering and service industries. The final chapter deals with the ways of reducing the effects of an error introduced during the design of a program. This book is a valuable resource for software engineers.

The market for safe, secure and reliable computer systems is expanding continuously and these Proceedings provide an opportunity to review the growth during the last decade and identify skills and technologies required for continued development in the area. The papers cover the experiences gained from specifying, creating, operating, and licensing computers in safety, security and reliability related applications. There are reviews of guidelines and industrial applications, with a section covering methods and tools used in designing, documenting, analysing, testing and assessing systems dependent on the SAFECOMP factors.

Computers at Risk presents a comprehensive agenda for developing nationwide policies and practices for computer security. Specific recommendations are provided for industry and for government agencies engaged in computer security activities. The volume also outlines problems and opportunities in computer security research, recommends ways to improve the research infrastructure, and suggests topics for investigators. The book explores the diversity of the field, the need to engineer countermeasures based on speculation of what experts think computer attackers may do next, why the technology community has failed to respond to the need for enhanced security systems, how innovators could be encouraged to bring more options to the marketplace, and balancing the importance of security against the right of privacy.

Safety of Computer Control Systems is a collection of papers from the Proceedings of the IFAC Workshop, held in Stuttgart, Germany on May 16-18, 1979. This book discusses the inherent problems in the hardware and software application of computerized control to automated systems safeguarding human life, property, and the environment. The papers discuss more specific concerns, such as railway systems, aircraft landing systems, nuclear power stations, chemical reactors, elevators, and cranes. The book also describes the safety and reliability of complex industrial computer systems together with an example showing the application of computers in power plants. One paper presents guidelines in documenting safety related computer systems that will help various parties who are involved in their purchase and operation. Another paper discusses how to detect failures in microcomputer systems such as memory violations and invalid operation code detectors. This book then concludes by discussing the necessity of inspecting process computers used in nuclear power plants, especially when computers are used in reactor protection, control rod, and authentication of log-in systems. This collection can be of interest for students of programming, process-computer analysts, heads of computer technology departments and institutions, and lecturers in industrial computer programming and design.

The proceedings of the fifth workshop in this subject continue the trend set by the previous four and discusses some of the current problems involved in the design and production of safe real-time computer systems. Topics covered include software quality assurance, software fault tolerance, design for safety, and reliability and safety assessment. Every paper details the theoretical and practical problems involved in the development of safe systems and should therefore be of interest to all those involved in systems design.

We are building systems today-and using computers to control them-that have the potential for large-scale destruction of life and environment. More than ever, software engineers and system developers, as well as their managers, must understand the issues and develop the skills needed to anticipate and prevent accidents. Nancy Leveson examines what is currently known about building safe electromechanical systems and looks at past accidents to see what practical lessons can be applied to new computer-controlled systems.

Safety of Computer Control Systems 1983: Achieving Safe Real Time Computer Systems contains the proceedings of the Third IFAC/IFIP Workshop held at Cambridge, UK on September 20-22, 1983. Composed of 36 chapters, separated into the eight sessions of the workshop, this book begins with a discussion of the safety and reliability of computer control systems. Subsequent chapters explore the systems design for safety and reliability; fault tolerance, recovery, and use of redundancy; and aspects of fault tolerance for system reliability. Other chapters detail specification techniques; system development and quality assurance; verifications and validations; case studies; as well as scheduling, networks, and communications.