ASSURE 2016 Call for Papers - 4th International Workshop on Assurance Cases for Software-intensive Systems

CALL FOR PAPERS

4th International Workshop on Assurance Cases for Software-intensive Systems (ASSURE 2016)
September 20, 2016 | Trondheim, Norway | Collocated with SAFECOMP 2016.

DESCRIPTION
Software plays a key role in high-risk systems, e.g., safety-, security-, and mission-critical systems. Several certification standards/guidelines now recommend and/or mandate the development of assurance cases for software-intensive systems, e.g., defense (UK MoD DS-0056), aviation (CAP 760, and the FAA's Flight Standards Information Management System), automotive (ISO 26262), and healthcare (FDA Total Product Lifecycle Guidance for Infusion Pumps). As such, there is a need to develop models, tools, and techniques that trarget the development of assurance arguments for software. The goals of the 2016 Workshop on Assurance Cases for Software-intensive Systems (ASSURE 2016) are to:

• explore techniques for creating/assessing assurance cases for software-intensive systems;
• examine the role of assurance cases in the engineering lifecycle of critical systems;
• identify the dimensions of effective practice in the development and evaluation of assurance cases;
• investigate the relationship between dependability techniques and assurance cases; and,
• identify critical research challenges and define a roadmap for future development.

We solicit high-quality contributions (research, practice, tools, and position papers) on the application of assurance case principles and techniques to assure that the dependability properties of critical software-intensive systems have been met. Papers should attempt to address the workshop goals in general. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to the following.

TOPICS

• Assurance issues in emerging paradigms, e.g., adaptive and autonomous systems, including self-driving cars, unmanned aircraft systems, complex health care and decision making systems, etc.
• Standards: Industry guidelines and standards are increasingly requiring the development of assurance cases, e.g., the automotive standard ISO 26262, and the FDA guidance on the total product lifecycle for infusion pumps.
• Certification and regulations: The role and usage of assurance cases in the certification of critical systems, as well as to show compliance to regulations.
• Dependable architectures: How do fault-tolerant architectures and design measures such as diversity and partitioning relate to assurance cases?
• Dependability analysis: What are the relationships between dependability analysis techniques and the assurance case paradigm?
• Tools: Using the output from software engineering tools (testing, formal verification, code generators) as evidence in assurance cases / using tools for the modeling, analysis and management of assurance cases.
• Application of formal techniques to create and analyze arguments.
• Modeling and meta modeling: Representation of structured arguments through meta models, such as OMG's Structured Assurance Case Metamodel (SACM).
• Assurance of software quality attributes, e.g., safety, security and maintainability as well as dependability in general, including tradeoffs, and exploring notions of the quality of assurance cases themselves.
• Domain-specific assurance issues, in domains such as aerospace, automotive, healthcare, defense and power.
• Reuse and modularization: Contracts and patterns for improving the reuse of assurance case structures.
• Other topics, including the exploration of relevant techniques for assurance cases for real-time, concurrent, and distributed systems; and the connections between the Goal Structuring Notation for assurance cases and goal-orientation from the requirements engineering community.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

• All papers must be original work not published, or in submission, elsewhere.
• All papers should be submitted only in PDF. Please verify that papers can be reliably printed and viewed on screen before submitting.
• Papers should conform to the LNCS paper formatting guidelines. See the ASSURE 2016 website for details.
• Regular (research, or practice) papers can be up to 12 pages long including figures, references, and any appendices.
• Tools papers can be up to 10 pages long including figures, references and any appendices.
  • Note: Authors of accepted tools papers will be expected to give a demonstration of the tool(s) at the workshop, i.e., no screenshots.
• Position papers can be between 4 and 6 pages long, including figures, references, and any appendices.
• Submit your paper electronically by May 17, 2015 through via EasyChair.

Papers will be peer-reviewed by at least three program committee members. Accepted papers will be published in the SAFECOMP 2016 Workshop Proceedings, to be published by Springer, in the Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) Series.

IMPORTANT DATES

• Workshop papers due: May 17, 2016
• Author notification: June 7, 2016
• Camera ready papers: June 20, 2016
• ASSURE 2016 Workshop: September 20, 2016
• SAFECOMP 2016: September 20 - 23, 2016

WORKSHOP ORGANIZERS

• Ewen Denney, SGT / NASA Ames Research Center, USA
• Ibrahim Habli, University of York, UK
• Ganesh Pai, SGT / NASA Ames Research Center, USA

PROGRAM COMMITTEE
To be confirmed. See the ASSURE 2016 Website.