CRITICAL STEP

CRITICAL Software Technology for an Evolutionary Partnership

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 Obiettivo del progetto (Objective)

'The CRITICAL STEP aims to establish the basis for a long term strategic research collaboration between partners in the growing and challenging domain of software for large-scale Safety-Critical Systems (SCSs) based on the use of Off-The-Shelf (OTS) software components for the control of complex distributed infrastructures (e.g. systems for Air Traffic Management, Process Control in Chemical and Nuclear factories, Network Control in the Oil and Gas Industry). The global demand for such systems is high and it is expected to increase in the next years. The actual trend is to use middleware platforms with modular OTS components as a way to: 1) master the complexity in software design by creating, developing a managing an information control system and interconnection between federated systems; 2) reduce development and maintenance time and cost; 3) improve efficiency. Due to the critical nature of the infrastructures to be controlled, these goals must be achieved while assuring quantifiable requirements for safety and security. The CRITICAL STEP project proposes a Transfer of Knowledge (ToK) programme between Industry and Academy through secondments of their internal staff and integration of new recruited staff. The Tok objectives regard 3 main research topics: 1) qualitative evaluation of OTS software for SCS applications; 2) quantitative evaluation of dependability and robustness of OTS based SCSs; 3) R&D of techniques for on-line fault diagnosis. The partners involved in this project feel they are in need of sharing and combining their knowledge and use the existing synergies/complementarities to set long term strategic bases to deal with the complexity of the next generation SCSs, resist market competition and win the challenge of developing new safe technologies and standards. The involved researchers will share their expertise, absorb knowledge, develop original competences and integrate their new acquired know-how back to their home companies.'

Introduzione (Teaser)

Readily available software technology has been exploited in ways that will encourage authorities to protect their critical infrastructures across a range of sectors and domains.

Descrizione progetto (Article)

The adoption of large-scale safety-critical systems (SCSs) to ensure safety and security in domains ranging from nuclear factories to oil refineries is crucial for the well-being of civilisation. The EU-funded project 'Critical software technology for an evolutionary partnership' (http://www.critical-step.eu (CRITICAL STEP)) fostered long-term research collaboration among partners in software for SCSs. It sought to exploit off-the-shelf software components for the control of complex distributed infrastructures as worldwide growth for such infrastructures increases, along with the corresponding security challenges.

To achieve its aims, the project team brought together four partners from university and research centres, as well as from small and medium enterprises. It developed three key tools in the field, the first of which was conceived for robustness testing of heterogeneous web services through a series of automatic and proper tests. The second tool, called software fault emulator, was designed to inject bugs in complex software systems to evaluate fault tolerance mechanisms and algorithms against faulty software components. Equally noteworthy was the third tool, a multicore injection tool to introduce hardware errors in multicore processors to assess how the application and operating systems can handle multicore errors.

The tools were then tested in real-life scenarios in the field of air traffic management and airspace. The results demonstrated the success of the tools in achieving their objectives and in helping protect critical infrastructures using less expensive and more ubiquitous technology.

Overall project findings have been disseminated through journals and conferences, as well as through the project website. These tools will undoubtedly help not only Europe but also the world in guarding against bugs, hackers and even terrorist threats to key infrastructures.