The 1st International scientific and technical conference "Dependable systems, services and technologies" will be held on the basis of Poltava Military Institute of Communication in Poltava in April 25-28, 2006.

Background

One of the most important scientific and practical problems in the computer and software engineering is ensuring of reliability of components and systems. It is concerned with increasing of their influence on reliability and safety of computer-based systems for critical (nuclear power plants, aerospace systems, telecommunications) and business-critical (banking systems, e-commerce) applications. Now it is impossible to ensure reliability of such systems in conventional way that means to maintain reliability without taking into account their operation environment and components failure consequences. There are several reasons to use wider context:

• Scalability of computer-based and telecommunication systems;
• Indeterminacy and variability of their components;
• Distributed architecture and dynamism of operation processes;
• Increase of environment aggression and extension of nomenclature of causes that result in complete or partial failure to provide required functions or services (failures of hardware, software or network components, personnel errors or information attacks);

Traditionally there are several lines of research and practical elaborations in this field. They are related to reliability (and availability), survivability, informational and functional safety of computer systems and networks. It is important to elaborate complex approaches to meet the requirements of level of these characteristics for critical applications both in practical and scientific areas. Integration of foundations and methods of these characteristics measures required values ensuring can be made on the basis of concept of dependable (reliable in the wide mean) systems that have abilities (a set of characteristics) to ensure guaranteed fulfilment of required functions and services. Methods and tools based on this concept are widely developed and find a use for modern information and telecommunication technologies used in critical and business-critical systems. At the same time it is important to discuss these problems and to find the ways solving of theoretical and practical problems.

During DESSERT-2006 we will consolidate regional scientists, engineers and other specialists from Eastern Europe and conduct focused discussions aiming at identification of methodological and technological problems in dependability (and its attributes - reliability, safety, integrity, etc.) assessment and ensuring for different critical and business-critical applications.

Objectives

• The analysis of terminological and methodological aspects of dependability (reliability, functional and information safety) of computer-based and telecommunication systems in the national and international context;
• The information interchange and discussion of results of research and engineering elaborations in the area of assessment and ensuring of dependability of critical and business critical computer-based and telecommunication systems;
• The activation of maintenance of scientific and technical elaborations and software products in the computer-based systems for airspace, energy, telecommunication and other complexes of critical and commercial application;
• The integration into system of international conferences on dependable computer-based systems and technologies (EDCC, DSN, SafeCom, ESREL, etc.);
• The demonstration of practical achievement in the creation, adaptation and application of reliable and safe software, hardware and network solutions.

Application Areas

• Critical applications (computer-based systems of airspace, energy, transport and other complexes with stringent requirements to reliability and to safety);
• Business-critical applications (computer-based banking systems, telecommunication networks, e-commerce, etc.);
• Commercial software and hardware with stringent reliability requirements.

Basic scientific and technical topics

Conference problems relate to analysis, modelling, designing, testing, production, examination and maintenance of hardware and software of computer-based systems and networks for critical and business-critical applications with stringent requirements to reliability, survivability and safety. Here is the list of topics we offer to discuss (it is possible to expand it):

• Systems analysis of reliability, survivability and safety of critical applications complexes. Dependability as integrated characteristic of computer-based and telecommunication systems.
• Methods and tools of assessment and ensuring of fault-tolerance and survivability of VLSI- architectures (microprocessor-based systems, PLD, systolic arrays, etc.) and embedded real-time systems.
• Methods and tools of modelling, reliability assessment and development technology of fault-tolerance software.
• Development, implementation and monitoring of dependable service-oriented systems and web-services (e-commerce, e-education, etc.).
• Modelling, analysis and development technologies of fault- and crash-tolerance local, corporate and global computer networks.
• Multiversion IT-technologies, systems and projects.
• Methods and tool of control, diagnosis, verification and certification of computer systems, networks and technologies.
• Methods and tools of assessment and ensuring of man-machine system reliability.
• Functional safety of information-controlling systems of nuclear power plants, airspace systems and other critical systems.
• Information safety of computer-based systems for critical and business-critical applications.
• Management of reliability and safety and economical aspects of these characteristics ensuring.
• Methodological aspects of teaching of educational branches concerning these topics.

Discussion forms

It is planned to carry out the discussion in the following forms:

• Subject round-table discussions and master classes on dominant problems.
• Lecture-report reviews in specified or proposed topics.
• Presentations of scientific and educational publications, software products and technical tools.