Survey on Formal Methods and Tools in Railways: The ASTRail Approach

Ferrari, Alessio; Beek, Maurice H. ter; Mazzanti, Franco; Basile, Davide; Fantechi, Alessandro; Gnesi, Stefania; Piattino, Andrea; Trentini, Daniele

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-18744-6_15

“…The paper by Ferrari et al [71] presented a systematic review on 'Formal Methods and Tools' for the development of ASTRail, under the Shift2Rail project proposal. They analyzed different formal methods and tools used for the development of railway signaling and interlocking system during the last decades.…”

Section: Industrial Experience Of Adopting Formal Methods To Urban Railwaymentioning

confidence: 99%

A Survey on Formal Specification and Verification of Smart Mass Transit Railway Interlocking System

Kadakolmath¹,

Ramu²

2021

IJSSE

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Nowadays interest in Smart Mass Transit Rail has grown-up to a large extent in a metropolitan area as the need for urban mobility has increased steadily. The reliability of software being used in such mass transit rail is crucial for us, specifically when software crashes may lead to catastrophic loss of human life and assets. For example, when we travel by metro it is essential for us that the interlocking system software controlling the metros are accurate so collisions and derailment are prevented. The reliability and safety of such interlocking systems are made on the precise functional requirements specification and verification respectively. Therefore, the precise functional requirements specification and verification of such interlocking systems represent a challenge in an active research area, so in this paper, we survey various articles in this field and discuss their consequences.

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“…The extensive report from Garavel and Graf [69] provides a state-of-the-art account on the use of formal methods in academia and industry, and a large number of success stories: a carefully selected list of 30, well-documented case studies from three decades (one per year from the period 1982ś2011), including a large number of railway cases. Finally, we mention three recent questionnaire surveys on the use of formal methods in the railway domain [12,13,67], conducted with both academic and industrial stakeholders in the context of Shift2Rail, which identiies the main formal methods and tools used in the railway domain as well as their most relevant functionalities and features.…”

Section: Related Reviewsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A set of international joint projects has also been funded on formal methods for railways starting from 1998 (14 projects in total were counted until 2018, cf. [67]). Notable cases include OpenETCS (http://openetcs.org) and the more recent 4SECURail (https://www.4securail.eu) and X2Rail-1 (https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/730640).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Formal Methods in Railways: A Systematic Mapping Study

Ferrari¹,

Beek

²

2022

Self Cite

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Formal methods are mathematically based techniques for the rigorous development of software-intensive systems. The railway signaling domain is a field in which formal methods have traditionally been applied, with several success stories. This article reports on a mapping study that surveys the landscape of research on applications of formal methods to the development of railway systems. Following the guidelines of systematic reviews, we identify 328 relevant primary studies, and extract information about their demographics, the characteristics of formal methods used and railway-specific aspects. Our main results are as follows: (i) we identify a total of 328 primary studies relevant to our scope published between 1989 and 2020, of which 44% published during the last 5 years and 24% involving industry; (ii) the majority of studies are evaluated through Examples (41%) and Experience Reports (38%), while full-fledged Case Studies are limited (1.5%); (iii) Model checking is the most commonly adopted technique (47%), followed by simulation (27%) and theorem proving (19.5%); (iv) the dominant languages are UML (18%) and B (15%), while frequently used tools are ProB (9%), NuSMV (8%) and UPPAAL (7%); however, a diverse landscape of languages and tools is employed; (v) the majority of systems are interlocking products (40%), followed by models of high-level control logic (27%); (vi) most of the studies focus on the Architecture (66%) and Detailed Design (45%) development phases. Based on these findings, we highlight current research gaps and expected actions. In particular, the need to focus on more empirically sound research methods, such as Case Studies and Controlled Experiments, and to lower the degree of abstraction, by applying formal methods and tools to development phases that are closer to software development. Our study contributes with an empirically based perspective on the future of research and practice in formal methods applications for railways. It can be used by formal methods researchers to better focus their scientific inquiries, and by railway practitioners for an improved understanding of the interplay between formal methods and their specific application domain.

show abstract

“…The extensive report from Garavel and Graf [54] provides a state-of-the-art account on the use of formal methods in academia and industry, and a large number of success stories: a carefully selected list of 30, well-documented case studies from three decades (one per year from the period 1982-2011), including a large number of railway cases. Finally, we mention three recent questionnaire surveys on the use of formal methods in the railway domain [9,10,53], conducted with both academic and industrial stakeholders in the context of Shift2Rail, which identifies the main formal methods and tools used in the railway domain as well as their most relevant functionalities and features.…”

Section: Related Reviewsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A set of international joint projects has also been funded on formal methods for railways starting from 1998 (14 projects in total were counted until 2018, cf. [53]). Notable cases include OpenETCS (http://openetcs.org) and the more recent 4SECURail (https://www.4securail.eu) and X2Rail-1 (https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/730640).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Formal Methods in Railways: a Systematic Mapping Study

Ferrari,

ter Beek

2021

Preprint

Self Cite

0

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Formal methods are mathematically based techniques for the rigorous development of software-intensive systems. The railway signaling domain is a field in which formal methods have traditionally been applied, with several success stories. This article reports on a mapping study that surveys the landscape of research on applications of formal methods to the development of railway systems. Following the guidelines of systematic reviews, we identify 328 relevant primary studies, and extract information about their demographics, the characteristics of formal methods used and railway-specific aspects. Our main results are as follows: (i) we identify a total of 328 primary studies relevant to our scope published between 1989 and 2020, of which 44% published during the last 5 years and 24% involving industry; (ii) the majority of studies are evaluated through Examples (41%) and Experience Reports (38%), while full-fledged Case Studies are limited (1.5%); (iii) Model checking is the most commonly adopted technique (47%), followed by simulation (27%) and theorem proving (19.5%); (iv) the dominant languages are UML (18%) and B (15%), while frequently used tools are ProB (9%), NuSMV (8%) and UPPAAL (7%); however, a diverse landscape of languages and tools is employed; (v) the majority of systems are interlocking products (40%), followed by models of high-level control logic (27%); (vi) most of the studies focus on the Architecture (66%) and Detailed Design (45%) development phases. Based on these findings, we highlight current research gaps and expected actions. In particular, the need to focus on more empirically sound research methods, such as Case Studies and Controlled Experiments, and to lower the degree of abstraction, by applying formal methods and tools to development phases that are closer to software development. Our study contributes with an empirically based perspective on the future of research and practice in formal methods applications for railways. It can be used by formal methods researchers to better focus their scientific inquiries, and by railway practitioners for an improved understanding of the interplay between formal methods and their specific application domain.

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Survey on Formal Methods and Tools in Railways: The ASTRail Approach

Cited by 30 publications

References 26 publications

A Survey on Formal Specification and Verification of Smart Mass Transit Railway Interlocking System

A Survey on Formal Specification and Verification of Smart Mass Transit Railway Interlocking System

Formal Methods in Railways: A Systematic Mapping Study

Formal Methods in Railways: a Systematic Mapping Study

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