The First Twenty-Five Years of Industrial Use of the B-Method

Butler, Michael; Körner, Philipp; Krings, Sebastian; Lecomte, Thierry; Leuschel, Michaël; Mejia, Luis-Fernando; Voisin, Laurent

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-58298-2_8

“…There has been a long history of applying formal methods and tools in the railway domain [9], with the B method being the most popular industry-strength method [10]. One of the most successful areas of railway has been safety verification of interlocking in the Communication-Based Train Control (CBTC) railway lines, including metro, subway, light and shuttle trains.…”

Section: Methods For Verification Of Railway Signallingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Practical Verification of Railway Signalling Programs

Iliasov¹,

Taylor²,

Laibinis

³

et al. 2023

IEEE Trans. Dependable and Secure Comput.

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SafeCap is a modern toolkit for modelling, simulation and formal verification of railway networks. This paper discusses the use of SafeCap for formal analysis and automated scalable safety verification of solid state interlocking (SSI) programs -a technology at the heart of many railway signalling solutions around the world. The main driving force behind SafeCap development was to make it easy for signalling engineers to use the technology and thus to ensure its smooth industrial deployment. The unique qualities and the novelty of SafeCap are in making the use of formal notations and proofs fully transparent for the engineers. In this paper we explain the formal foundations of the proposed method, its tool support, and their successful application by railway companies in developing industrial signalling projects.

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“…Model-based development relies on rigorous techniques (e.g., the B family [32]) to derive a concrete (lowlevel) implementation from an abstract (high-level) speciication by successive reinement steps based on model transformation. During reinement, a speciication is complemented with details that are unnecessary in the higher-level speciications.…”

Section: Background and Motivation 21 Formal Techniquesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The last decade has seen several introductions and accounts of trends and experiences concerning the role of formal methods in the development of safety-critical applications [29,75,83], in particular in the railway domain and from an academic viewpoint by Fantechi et al [59ś61,63] and in the general transportation domain and from an industrial viewpoint, focusing mostly on SCADE and/or the B method, by Boulanger [22ś24]. Further studies are lessons learned and obstacles found with respect to decades of integrating formal methods in research, education and industrial practice, in particular in the transportation domain [18,32,50,95,103]. We also mention a number of recent surveys in the railway domain at large [58,86,97,99,105,122,129], neither of which involve formal methods.…”

Section: Related Reviewsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Formal Methods in Railways: A Systematic Mapping Study

Ferrari¹,

Beek

²

2022

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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.

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“…Model-based development relies on rigorous techniques (e.g., the B family [25]) to derive a concrete (low-level) implementation from an abstract (high-level) specification by successive refinement steps based on model transformation. During refinement, a specification is complemented with details that are unnecessary in the higher-level specifications.…”

Section: Formal Techniquesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The last decade has seen several introductions and accounts of trends and experiences concerning the role of formal methods in the development of safety-critical applications [23,59,64], in particular in the railway domain and from an academic viewpoint by Fantechi et al [45][46][47]49] and in the general transportation domain and from an industrial viewpoint, focusing mostly on SCADE and/or the B method, by Boulanger [16][17][18]. Further studies are lessons learned and obstacles found with respect to decades of integrating formal methods in research, education and industrial practice, in particular in the transportation domain [14,25,38,73,79]. We also mention a number of recent surveys in the railway domain at large [44,66,74,75,81,94,98], neither of which involve formal methods.…”

Section: Related Reviewsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Formal Methods in Railways: a Systematic Mapping Study

Ferrari,

ter Beek

2021

Preprint

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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The First Twenty-Five Years of Industrial Use of the B-Method

Cited by 34 publications

References 44 publications

Practical Verification of Railway Signalling Programs

Practical Verification of Railway Signalling Programs

Formal Methods in Railways: A Systematic Mapping Study

Formal Methods in Railways: a Systematic Mapping Study

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