Conditional Safety Certification of Open Adaptive Systems

Abstract

In recent years it has become more and more evident that openness and adaptivity are key characteristics of next-generation distributed systems. The reason for this is not least due to the advent of computing trends like ubiquitous computing, ambient intelligence, and cyber-physical systems, where systems are usually open for dynamic integration and able to react adaptively to changing situations. Despite being open and adaptive, it is a common requirement for such systems to be safe. However, traditional safety assurance techniques, both state-of-the-practice and state-of-the-art ones, are not sufficient in this context. We have recently developed some initial solution concepts based on conditional safety certificates and corresponding runtime analyses. In this article we show how to operationalize these concepts. To this end, we present in detail how to specify conditional safety certificates, how to transform them into suitable runtime models, and how these models finally support dynamic safety evaluations.