Assure 2018

ASSURE 2018 has successfully concluded.

UPDATES

• New! 2018-07-30: The ASSURE 2018 program has been announced. The final program is contingent on registration. If you haven't already done so, please register for ASSURE 2018 via SAFECOMP 2018.
• 2018-06-21: ASSURE 2018 will be held on Tuesday, Sep. 18, 2018. The accepted papers and program will be posted here soon.
• 2018-06-12: Authors of accepted papers have been notified. The final, camera-ready version and a signed copyright release form are due on June 21, 2018. Instructions on submitting both the final version and the copyright form also have been posted.
• 2018-05-30: Paper submission deadlines have passed. Submission is now closed.
• 2018-05-18: ASSURE deadlines have been extended by a week, to May 29, 2018.
• 2018-04-09: The deadline to submit papers to ASSURE 2018 is May 22, 2018. Submit a paper now!
• 2018-03-28: See the call for papers or download the PDF call for papers.
• 2018-03-26: The ASSURE 2018 website is live!

Introduction

The 6th International Workshop on Assurance Cases for Software-intensive Systems (ASSURE 2018) is being collocated this year with SAFECOMP 2018, and aims to provide an international forum for high-quality contributions on the application of assurance case principles and techniques to provide assurance that the dependability properties of critical, software-intensive systems have been met.

The main goals of the workshop are to:

• Explore techniques for the creation and assessment of assurance cases for software-intensive systems
• Examine the role of assurance cases in the engineering lifecycle of critical systems
• Identify the dimension of effective practice in the development and evaluation of assurance cases
• Investigate the relationship between dependability techniques and assurance cases
• Identify critical research challenges and define a roadmap for future development

We invite original, high-quality research, practice, tools and position papers that have not been published/submitted elsewhere. See the full Call for Papers, for more details on topics. Also view the submission deadlines, and guidelines.

Program

September 18, 2017, from 08:00 – 17:30

08:00 – 09:00 Registration

09:00 – 11:00 Session 1. Welcome, Introduction, Keynote and Confidence Assessment

09:00 – 09:05 Welcome and Introduction, ASSURE 2018 Organizers

09:05 – 10:00 Keynote Talk. Assurance Cases: Mindsets, Methodologies and Convergence, Robin Bloomfield

10:00 – 10:30 Research on the Classification of the Relationships Among the Same Layer Elements in Assurance Case Structure for Evaluation, B. Xu, M. Lu, T. Gu, and D. Zhang

10:30 – 11:00 Morning Coffee/Tea Break

11:00 – 12:30 Session 2. Patterns and Processes

11:00 – 11:30 The Assurance Recipe: Facilitating Assurance Patterns, J. Firestone and M. Cohen

11:30 – 12:00 Incorporating Attacks Modeling into Safety Process, A. Surkovic, D. Hanic, E. Lisova, A. Causevic, K. Lundqvist, D. Wenslandt, and C. Falk

12:00 – 12:30 Assurance Case Considerations for Interoperable Medical Systems, Y. Zhang, B. Larson, and J. Hatcliff

12:30 – 13:30 Lunch Break

13:30 – 15:30 Session 3. Tools and Automation

13:30 – 14:00 Two Decades of Assurance Case Tools: A Survey, M. Maksimov, N. Fung, S. Kokaly, and M. Chechik

14:00 – 14:30 MMINT-A: A Tool for Automated Change Impact Assessment on Assurance Cases, N. Fung, S. Kokaly, A. Di Sandro, R. Salay, and M. Chechik

14:30 – 15:00 D-Case Steps: New Steps for Writing Assurance Cases, Y. Onuma, T. Takai, T. Koshiyama, and Y. Matsuno

15:00 – 15:30 Continuous Argument Engineering: Tackling Uncertainty in Machine Learning based Systems,

F. Ishikawa, and Y. Matsuno

15:30 – 16:00 Afternoon Coffee/Tea Break

16:00 – 17:20 Session 4. Panel Session. What are Assurance Case Tools For?

17:20 – 17:30 ASSURE 2018 Conclusion and Wrap-Up

Important Dates

Call for Papers

Software plays a key role in high-risk systems, e.g., safety-, and security-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 670, FAA's operational approval guidance for unmanned aircraft systems), automotive (ISO 26262), and healthcare (FDA infusion pumps total product lifecycle guidance). As such, there is a need to develop models, techniques and tools that target the development of assurance arguments for software.

The goals of the 2018 Workshop on Assurance Cases for Software-intensive Systems (ASSURE 2018) 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

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• 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.
• Empiricism: Empirical assessment of the applicability of assurance cases in different domains and certification regimes.
• 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?
• Safety and security co-engineering: What are the impacts of security on safety, particularly safety cases, and how can safety and security cases (e.g., as proposed in ISO 26262 and SAE J 3061 respectively) be reconciled?
• 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 for the creation, analysis, reuse, and modularization of arguments.
• Exploration of relevant techniques for assurance cases for real-time, concurrent, and distributed systems.
• 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.
• Relations between different formalisms and paradigms of assurance and argumentation, such as Goal Structuring Notation, STAMP, IBIS, and goal-oriented formalisms such as KAOS.

Submit

Submission Instructions for Accepted Papers

If your paper has been accepted for the ASSURE 2018 Program, please follow ALL the instructions below, when preparing your final, camera-ready paper for the proceedings.

Deadline

The final paper and the signed copyright form are due on June 21, 2018. This is a firm deadline for the production of the proceedings.

Acknowledgements

Include acknowledgements of the support your work/project has received, as appropriate and if applicable, at the end of the paper.

Final Paper Submission

Submit your final, camera-ready paper using your EasyChair author account