Formal Methods - Science topic

It is argued that the theory of opposition is in position to contribute as a formal method of conceptual engineering, by means of an increasing dichotomy-making process that augments the number of elements into any structured lexical field. After recalling the roots of this theory and its logical tenets, it is shown how the processes of expansion a...

Model finding, as embodied by SAT solvers and similar tools, is used widely, both in embedding settings and as a tool in its own right. For instance, tools like Alloy target SAT to enable users to incrementally define, explore, verify, and diagnose sophisticated specifications for a large number of complex systems. These tools critically include a...

This study examines traffic signal optimization at an intersection by means of formal methods for mobility and safety of vehicular and pedestrian movements. In view of this, the long-established pre-timed and actuated control methods for traffic signals are inadequate to make extensive use of the comprehensive traffic states of conventional and con...

Introduction: The need to address the issue of the quality of urban life in these areas becomes more apparent when the residents of informal settlements are considered to be among the most vulnerable sections of an urban society, and paying attention to the urban and biological needs, Providing the minimum needs and enjoying citizenship rights are...

In order to develop trustworthy distributed systems, verification techniques and formal methods, including lightweight and practical approaches, have been employed to certify the design or implementation of security protocols. Lightweight formal methods offer a more accessible alternative to traditional fully formalised techniques by focusing on si...

With artificial intelligence (AI) being well established within the daily lives of research communities, we turn our gaze toward an application area that appears intuitively unsuited for probabilistic decision-making: the area of formal methods (FM). FM aim to provide sound and understandable reasoning about problems in computer science, which seem...

The work described in this paper develops a formal method for modeling and exhaustive verification of mutual exclusion algorithms. The process is based on timed automata and the Uppaal model checker. The technique was successfully applied to several mutual exclusion algorithms, mainly under the atomic memory model, when the read and write operation...

This paper describes use of model checking to verify synchronisation properties of an industrial welding system consisting of a cobot arm and an external turntable. The robots must move synchronously, but sometimes get out of synchronisation, giving rise to unsatisfactory weld qualities in problem areas, such as around corners. These mistakes are c...

Most reinforcement learning (RL) platforms use high-level programming languages, such as OpenAI Gymnasium using Python. These frameworks provide various API and benchmarks for testing RL algorithms in different domains, such as autonomous driving (AD) and robotics. These platforms often emphasise the design of RL algorithms and the training perform...

Markov decision processes (MDPs) are a standard model for sequential decision-making problems and are widely used across many scientific areas, including formal methods and artificial intelligence (AI). MDPs do, however, come with the restrictive assumption that the transition probabilities need to be precisely known. Robust MDPs (RMDPs) overcome t...

Although randomization has long been used in concurrent programs, formal methods for reasoning about this mixture of effects have lagged behind. In particular, no existing program logics can express specifications about the distributions of outcomes resulting from programs that are both probabilistic and concurrent. To address this, we introduce Pr...

Transformation plays a key role in verification technology, conveying information across different abstraction layers and underpinning the correctness, efficiency, and usability of formal-methods tools. Nevertheless, transformation procedures are often tightly coupled with individual verifiers, and thus, hard to reuse across different tools. The la...

AC-unification, i.e., unification modulo Associativity and Commutativity axioms is a key component in rewrite-based programming languages and theorem provers. We have used the PVS proof assistant to specify Stickel’s pioneering AC-unification algorithm and proved it to be terminating (using an elaborate lexicographic measure based on Fages’ termina...

To implement the Distributed Maritime Operations (DMO) concept, the U.S. Navy is shifting to a hybrid fleet, integrating manned and unmanned platforms to increase force resilience. Despite policy directing digital engineering to manage the risks of this transition, there is little evidence proving the value of model-based systems engineering (MBSE)...

Incorporating advanced information and communication technologies into smart grids (SGs) offers substantial operational benefits while increasing vulnerability to cyber threats like false data injection (FDI) attacks. Current SG attack analysis tools predominantly employ formal methods or adversarial machine learning (ML) techniques with rule-based...

Given a foliation $\mathcal{F}$ on $X$ and an embedding $X\subseteq Y$, is there a foliation on $Y$ extending $\mathcal{F}$? Using formal methods, we show that this question has an affirmative answer whenever the embedding is sufficiently positive with respect to $(X,\mathcal{F})$ and the singularities of $\mathcal{F}$ belong to a certain class. Th...

This article explores the evolution and effectiveness of formal verification enhanced with Assertion-Based Verification (ABV) as a superior alternative to traditional Universal Verification Methodology (UVM) in complex computing chip design. Through analysis of implementation data from major semiconductor companies, including Intel's Core i7 and IB...

The digitization of healthcare presents numerous challenges, including the complexity of biological systems, vast data generation, and the need for personalized treatment plans. Traditional computational methods often struggle with these demands, leading to delays in diagnosis and treatment. Quantum Computing (QC) and Quantum Machine Learning (QML)...

As an emerging technology, blockchain demonstrates strong potential for applications in digital finance. As a core component of blockchain, the security and reliability of smart contracts is crucial. To ensure the high reliability of smart contracts, this study employs formal construction and verification techniques based on game theory. Initially,...

This work explores the utilization of a Large Language Model (LLM), specifically OpenAI’s ChatGPT, to develop a program as a sequence of refinements. Traditionally in formal methods literature such refinements are proven correct, which can be time consuming. In this work the refinements are tested using property-based testing. This approach address...

Any project implemented using Scrum is characterized by the impact of risks, including negative changes in the environment and crisis circumstances. Therefore, the processes related to risk management, which is the object of this paper, become important. The problem solved in this study is to improve the efficiency of projects through the construct...

This paper presents several challenges when developing AI-based software systems for potentially safety-critical domains in the European jurisdiction. Starting with the legal developments in the European Union, especially the so-called AI act, we recall the idea of the risk-based approach and its implications for the software engineering developmen...

Semantic reflection combines reflection in programming languages with semantic technologies for knowledge representation. It enables a program to represent and query its own runtime state as a knowledge graph. The knowledge graphs reflecting program states can be combined with domain knowledge which allows queries about a program to be made in term...

Many legal computations, including the amount of tax owed by a citizen, whether they are eligible to social benefits, or the wages due to civil state servants, are specified by computational laws. Their application, however, is performed by expert computer programs intended to faithfully transcribe the law into computer code. Bugs in these programs...

Currently, the most widespread software quality assurance methods in the avionics domain are semi-automated reviews and testing. However, their effort grows disproportionately to the size of the system under development. Also, these methods cannot achieve exhaustive coverage due to the complexity of today’s avionics systems and their potentially in...

Abductive logic programming (ALP) extends logic programming with hypothetical reasoning by means of abducibles, an extension able to handle interesting problems, such as diagnosis, planning, and verification with formal methods. Implementations of this extension have been using Prolog meta-interpreters and Prolog programs with Constraint Handling R...

This study addresses the prevalent gap between structured models and informal architectural methodologies in software engineering. Recognizing the potential of informal architecture artifacts in analytical processes, we introduce a methodology that efficiently transforms these informal components into structured models. This method facilitates unde...

Digitalization efforts often face a key challenge: business processes must not only be efficient in achieving their goals but also adhere to legal regulations. Business process compliance refers to aligning processes with these regulations. Numerous frameworks have been developed to address this, with the earliest dating back to 1981. This study fo...

Introduction Bruxism is characterised by a repetitive activity in the masticatory muscles that involves teeth clenching or grinding and/or forceful mandibular movements. Its management is typically initiated when individuals start experiencing the adverse effects of the condition. One of the available intervention forms is the administration of bot...

In a GraphQL Web API, a so-called GraphQL schema defines the types of data objects that can be queried, and so-called resolver functions are responsible for fetching the relevant data from underlying data sources. Thus, we can expect to use GraphQL not only for data access but also for data integration, if the GraphQL schema reflects the semantics...

Mission-time Linear Temporal Logic (MLTL) is rapidly increasing in popularity as a specification logic, e.g., for runtime verification, model checking, and other formal methods, driving a need for a larger tool base for analysis of this logic. To that end, we formalize formula progression for MLTL in the theorem prover Isabelle/HOL. As groundwork,...

To refine formal methods for concurrent systems, there are several ways of enriching classical operational semantics of process calculi. One can enable the auditing and undoing of past synchronisations thanks to communication keys, thus easing the study of true concurrency as a by-product. Alternatively, proof labels embed information about the ori...

Proof-of-concept exploits help demonstrate software vulnerability beyond doubt and communicate attacks to non-experts. But exploits can be configuration-specific, for example when in Security APIs, where keys are set up specifically for the application and enterprise the API serves. In this work, we show how to automatically derive proof-of-concept...

Formal methods have been a successful approach for modelling and verifying the correctness of complex technologies like microprocessor chip design, biological systems and others. This is the main motivation of developing quantum formal techniques which is to describe and analyse quantum information processing systems. Our previous work demonstrates...

As a critical business activity in the aircraft life cycle, maintenance processes are highly complex and require multidisciplinary knowledge. Knowledge integration and representation oriented toward aircraft maintenance processes are necessary to improve work efficiency. Nonetheless, conventional approaches lack effective unified management, which...

This paper employs the Fractionally Integrated GARCH (FIGARCH) model to analyze the volatility of daily USD returns in four major currency pairs: Euro-USD, GBP-USD, INR-USD, and JPY-USD, using data from January 4, 1999, to August 6, 2021. Before model fitting, the squared-innovation series is examined for the presence of long memory through informa...

News text is information about things that have happened, presented in various forms such as print media, broadcast, and the Internet, so the news must use language that can be understood by the general public so that the news can be conveyed well and there are no misunderstandings in interpreting the information. existing news. The aim of this res...

The massive data demand requires content distribution networks (CDNs) to use evolving techniques for efficient content distribution with guaranteed quality of service (QoS). The distributed fog-based CDN model, with optimal fog node placements, is a suggested aproach by researchers to meet this demand. While many studies have focused on improving Q...

We present a new SAT backend for the B-Method to enable new applications of formal methods. The new backend interleaves low-level SAT solving with high-level constraint solving. It provides a “bare metal” access to SAT solving, while pre- and post-calculations can be done in the full B language, with access to higher-order or even infinite data val...

Software is ubiquitous in the digital world, and the correct function of software systems is critical for our society, industry, and infrastructure. While testing and static analysis are long-established techniques in software-development processes, it became widely acknowledged only in the past two decades that formal methods are required for givi...

The aim of this tutorial is to explain to the formal methods community the area of risk management and its most prominent concepts: the definition of risk, strategies for managing risk, the risk management cycle, and the role of ISO standards. For each of these concepts, I explain how formal methods relate and contribute, making risk management mor...

This tutorial paper introduces ASMETA, a comprehensive suite of integrated tools around the formal method Abstract State Machines to specify and analyze the executable behavior of discrete event systems. ASMETA supports the entire system development life-cycle, from the specification of the functional requirements to the implementation of the code,...

Over the last several decades, static and dynamic program analysis techniques have received widespread attention. Their application to mainstream programming languages always requires extending theories and finding practical solutions. This special issue of Software Tools for Technology Transfer presents novel theoretical directions and practical a...

This tutorial introduces quantum computing with a focus on the applicability of formal methods in this relatively new domain. We describe quantum circuits and convey an understanding of their inherent combinatorial nature and the exponential blow-up that makes them hard to analyze. Then, we show how weighted model counting (#SAT) can be used to sol...

The KeY tool is a state-of-the-art deductive program verifier for the Java language. Its verification engine is based on a sequent calculus for dynamic logic, realizing forward symbolic execution of the target program, whereby all symbolic paths through a program are explored. Method contracts make verification scalable. KeY combines auto-active an...

Multiparty session typing (MPST) is a formal method to make concurrent programming simpler. The idea is to use type checking to automatically prove safety (protocol compliance) and liveness (communication deadlock freedom) of implementations relative to specifications. Discourje is an existing run-time verification library for communication protoco...

SCADE is both a formal language and a model-based development environment, widely used to build and verify the models of safety-critical system (SCS). The SCADE Design Verifier (DV) provides SAT-based verification. However, DV cannot adequately express complex temporal specifications, and it may fail due to complexity problems such as floating numb...

As artificial intelligence (AI) systems become increasingly complex, the need for rigorous mathematical frameworks to improve explainability, reliability, and verification has become more pressing. Traditional approaches, such as set theory, struggle to fully capture the intricate spaces and transformations inherent in modern neural networks. Homot...

Requirements analysis, and more generally Systems Engineering, is one of the most important disciplines of the design process of new products. It is paramount to guarantee robust requirements and to carefully check that each of them is respected. To this end, Model-Based Systems Engineering aims at creating more formal methods to represent and trac...

The flood incidents are becoming more often and severe, thus extreme events require efficient and effective means of controlling and saving lives and property. The reason for this paper is to use Formal Modelling and Model Checking to analyse a new safety critical Flood Monitoring and Rescue System (FMRS) that shall form the basis for the efficient...

European Rail Traffic Management System (ERTMS) is a standard for the train control and signalling system whose application is spreading throughout Europe. The ETCS (European Train Control Sys-AQ1 tem) level 3 is attracting experts because it is still in the design phase. Many works provide formal models to the verification of ERTMS/ETCS using form...

The Signal is an end-to-end encrypted communication protocol composed of a double ratchet (DR) protocol and an extended triple Diffie-Hellman (X3DH) protocol. Its complex ratchet structure and the characteristics of protocol composition make it challenging to realize formal analysis. A formal analysis method based on logic of events theory (LoET) i...

Estimating the epileptogenic zone network (EZN) is an important part of the diagnosis of drug-resistant focal epilepsy and plays a pivotal role in treatment and intervention. Virtual brain twins, based on personalized whole brain modeling, provide a formal method for personalized diagnosis and treatment. They integrate patient-specific brain topogr...

The chapter introduces probabilistic CSP# (PCSP#) as a formal language for modeling probabilistic systems, emphasizing its foundational role in concurrent and parallel computation. PCSP# is an extension of communicating sequential programs (CSP#) that enables the modeling of probabilistic behaviors and uncertainties in system designs. We provide th...

We introduce a variant of a formalism appearing in recent work geared towards modelling systems in which a distinguished entity (leader) orchestrates the operation of an arbitrary number of identical entities (followers). Our variant is better suited for the verification of system properties involving complex arithmetic conditions. Whereas the orig...

Medical device software verification is essential for safety, effectiveness, and dependability. Traditional verification methods must adapt to complex software systems and regulatory requirements as technology evolves. This abstract discusses novel medical device software verification methods that improve accuracy, efficiency, and regulatory compli...

Introduction Acute pancreatitis (AP) is a common disease, and several scores aim to assess its prognosis. Our study aims to automatically recognize mild AP from computed tomography (CT) images in patients with acute abdominal pain but uncertain diagnosis from clinical and serological data through Radiomic model based on formal methods (FMs). Metho...

Software verification aims to prove that a program satisfies some given properties for all its possible executions. Software evolved incredibly fast during the last century, exposing several challenges to this scientific discipline. The goal of the “Challenges of Software Verification Symposium” is to monitor the state-of-the-art in this field. In...

Due to the health complications arising from the use of pesticides and insecticides, a considerable number of farmers in the agricultural sector are facing significant health challenges. The conventional practice of manually applying pesticides to crop fields through traditional irrigation systems has adverse effects on health. An optimistic altern...

Formal methods (FMs) have been cited as a viable methodology for developing high-quality software. However, the steep learning curve in efficiently using the underlying discrete mathematics and logic has hindered FMs’ adoption, leading to a decline in their initial interest in the 1980s. Traditionally, technical approaches have been pursued to addr...

Critical systems, in which failure and malfunction may result in severe human, environmental, and financial damages, are essential components in various sectors and particularly in energy domains. Although undesirable, integration error problems in the supervision of critical systems do occur, incurring significant expenses due to an operator’s sub...

This study investigates the features, functions and differences of women’s language styles used by female characters of different skin colors in “The Help” movie. The movie was chosen because it involves many female characters and conversations among women of different races which are related to the purpose of this study. The data was collected by...

Recent advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI), particularly in the advanced machine learning for the Natural Language Processing (NLP) paradigm, have led to the development of powerful Large Language Models (LLMs) capable of impressive feats in tasks like translation, text summarisation, text generation and code generation. However, a critica...

This work presents a novel systematic methodology to analyse the capabilities and limitations of Large Language Models (LLMs) with feedback from a formal inference engine, on logic theory induction. The analysis is complexity-graded w.r.t. rule dependency structure, allowing quantification of specific inference challenges on LLM performance. Integr...

Adhesive Capsulitis of the shoulder is a painful pathology limiting shoulder movements, commonly known as “Frozen Shoulder”. Since this pathology limits movement, it is important to make an early diagnosis. Diagnosing capsulitis relies on clinical assessment, although diagnostic imaging, such as Magnetic Resonance Imaging, can provide predictive or...

Although the Linux kernel is widely used, its complexity makes errors common and potentially serious. Traditional formal verification methods often have high overhead and rely heavily on manual coding. They typically verify only specific functionalities of the kernel or target microkernels and do not support continuous verification of the entire ke...

Introduction Some research studies aim to elucidate pathophysiology by examining blood or tissue markers in relation to clinical findings. In COVID‐19, this has led specialists to promote treatment options based on single studies without systematic appraisal and critical summaries of the data. As we could not identify any published tools for this p...

We study algorithms to analyze a particular class of Markov population processes that is often used in epidemiology. More specifically, Markov binomial chains are the model that arises from stochastic time-discretizations of classical compartmental models. In this work we formalize this class of Markov population processes and focus on the problem...

Background: In biomedical imaging research, experimental biologists generate vast amounts of data that require advanced computational analysis. Breakthroughs in experimental techniques, such as multiplex immunofluorescence tissue imaging, enable detailed proteomic analysis, but most biomedical researchers lack the programming and Artificial Intelli...

Density Functional Theory (DFT) is used extensively in the computation of electronic properties of matter, with various applications. Approximating the exchange-correlation (XC) functional is the key to the Kohn-Sham DFT approach, the basis of most DFT calculations. The choice of this density functional approximation (DFA) depends crucially on the...

Background. The banking services market is an integral element of the financial system of any country, and its efficient functioning is a prerequisite for the stable development of both the real sector and the national economy. Its role is especially relevant in the period of socio-economic and geopolitical fluctuations faced by the economic system...

The widespread use of advanced driver assistance systems in modern vehicles, together with their integration with the Internet and other road nodes, has made vehicle more vulnerable to cyber-attacks. To address these risks, the automotive industry is increasingly focusing on the development of security solutions: formal methods and software verific...

The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) present a challenge due to their potential for conflicting objectives, which hinders their effective implementation. In order to address the complexity of sustainability issues, a framework capable of capturing the specificity of diverse sustainability issues while offering a common methodology applicable...