Section: Partnerships and Cooperations

European Initiatives

Cooperation with NUI Maynooth, Ireland

We are involved in a bilateral research project with the National University of Ireland at Maynooth, funded by the Ulysses program between France and Ireland. The project addresses the question of formally verifying safety critical properties of software control systems, guaranteeing their reliability and safety. In particular, we address the following questions: What is the best methodology for generating a formal system requirements document (written in Event-B) for an already existing tram control system? What is the relationship between Event-B and Programmable Logic? How effectively can we support the formal translation of a system specification written in Event-B to its implementation written in programmable logic? Can we demonstrate that this formal transformation preserves the safety critical properties as specified for an existing tram control system? A combination of reverse engineering and refinement techniques are used to prove the safety critical properties of a tram control system, generating a suite of proof based patterns that may be used in the verification of safety critical properties of similar systems. Case studies involving subsystems of the tram control system will be used to develop Master level courses, ensuring technology transfer between industry and the classroom, and vice versa. Visits of Dominique Méry in February, August and December led to a series of lectures in the master program and in a Summer School organised by NUI Maynooth; Dominique Méry is completing models for ensuring the quality of produced codes. During a reciprocal visit of Rosemary Monahan of NUI Maynooth in October, she gave a tutorial on the verification of C# programs using Spec# and Boogie 2.