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Survey on Formal Methods and Tools in Railways: The ASTRail Approach

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Reliability, Safety, and Security of Railway Systems. Modelling, Analysis, Verification, and Certification (RSSRail 2019)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 11495))

Abstract

Formal methods and tools have been widely applied to the development of railway systems during the last decades. However, no universally accepted formal framework has emerged, and railway companies wishing to introduce formal methods have little guidance for the selection of the most appropriate methods and tools to adopt. A work package (WP) of the European project ASTRail, funded under the Shift2Rail initiative, addresses this problem, by performing a survey that considers scientific literature, international projects, and practitioners’ perspectives to identify a collection of formal methods and tools to be applied in railways. This paper summarises the current results of this WP. We surveyed 114 scientific publications, 44 practitioners, and 8 projects to come to a shortlist of 14 methods considered suitable for system modelling and verification in railways. The methods and tools were reviewed according to a set of functional, language-related, and quality features. The current paper extends the body of knowledge with a set of publicly available documents that can be leveraged by companies for guidance on formal methods selection in railway system development.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    shift2rail.org.

  2. 2.

    astrail.eu.

  3. 3.

    http://conferences.ncl.ac.uk/rssrail/.

  4. 4.

    In the case of SCADE, due to licensing issues, it was not possible to gain a hands-on experience within the limited timespan of the project. Hence, our evaluation is based on the analysis of the available official tool documentation and presentations, and on the experiences reported in students’ assignments at the University of Florence, carried out under the ANSYS SCADE Academic Program.

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Acknowledgements

This work has been partially funded by the ASTRail project. This project received funding from the Shift2Rail Joint Undertaking under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 777561. The content of this paper reflects only the authors’ view and the Shift2Rail Joint Undertaking is not responsible for any use that may be made of the included information.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. ISTI–CNR, Pisa, Italy

    Alessio Ferrari, Maurice H. ter Beek, Franco Mazzanti, Davide Basile, Alessandro Fantechi & Stefania Gnesi

  2. Università di Firenze, Florence, Italy

    Davide Basile & Alessandro Fantechi

  3. SIRTI S.p.A., Genoa, Italy

    Andrea Piattino & Daniele Trentini

Authors
  1. Alessio Ferrari
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  2. Maurice H. ter Beek
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  3. Franco Mazzanti
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  4. Davide Basile
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  5. Alessandro Fantechi
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  6. Stefania Gnesi
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  7. Andrea Piattino
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  8. Daniele Trentini
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Correspondence to Alessio Ferrari .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratoire IFSTTAR/ESTAS, Villeneuve d’Ascq , France

    Simon Collart-Dutilleul

  2. ClearSy, Aix en Provence, France

    Thierry Lecomte

  3. Newcastle University, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK

    Alexander Romanovsky

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Ferrari, A. et al. (2019). Survey on Formal Methods and Tools in Railways: The ASTRail Approach. In: Collart-Dutilleul, S., Lecomte, T., Romanovsky, A. (eds) Reliability, Safety, and Security of Railway Systems. Modelling, Analysis, Verification, and Certification. RSSRail 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11495. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18744-6_15

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18744-6_15

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