Towards a Methodological Approach to Specification and Analysis of Dependable Automation Systems

Abstract

The paper discusses a constructive approach to the temporal logic specification and analysis of dependability requirements of automation systems. The work is based on TRIO formal method, which supports a declarative temporal logic language with a linear notion of time, and makes use of UML class diagrams to describe the automation system. The general concepts presented for the automation system domain are here instantiated on a case study application taken from the energy distribution field. Partially funded by ItalianMinistry of Productive activities -Rete 21 -SITAR project 3 EEC-IST-2000-25434 DepAuDE (Dependability for embedded Automation systems in Dynamic Environment with intra-site and inter-site distribution aspects) project. 4 CESI is an Italian company providing services and performing research activities for the Electric Power System.

Dependability modeling and analysis of software systems specified with UML

“…Both [Addouche and Antoine 2004;Addouche et al 2006] and [Bernardi et al 2004a;2004b] provide support in the requirement and design phases (C1) of the real-time software development (C4). In particular, the considered application domains are, respectively, automated production systems and distributed control automation systems (C5).…”

“…The negative aspect of the approach is the poor separation of concerns, in fact new classes need to be defined and introduced in the system model, beside the classes representing the actual system components, for dependability analysis purposes (C17). [Bernardi et al 2004a;2004b] propose a set of UML class diagrams (C2), structured in packages (i.e., a CD framework), as a reusable pattern to collect dependability and real-time requirements of distributed control automation systems and to support the design of an appropriate fault tolerance strategy. They also propose a systematic method for the derivation of dependability analysis models, such as TRIO [Ghezzi et al 1990] temporal logic models (C10).…”

“…Criteria [Addouche and Antoine 2004;Addouche et al 2006] C1, C4, C5, C6, C8, C10, C11, C12, C17 [Bernardi et al 2004a;2004b] C1, C2, C4, C5, C8, C10, C11, C12, C13, C14, C15, C16, C17 Table XV. Reliability and safety.…”

Critical Infrastructures at Risk

“…The specification and analysis of dependability requirements have been also addressed by structured methodologies integrating standard object-oriented notations such as UML (Bernardi 2004) with (logical and operational) formal languages.…”