Insertion of formalism into systems level design

Abstract

Society's increasing dependence on complex technology mandates high assurance of system correctness. Traditional engineering disciplines such as civil or mechanical engineering achieve such assurance through applications of mathematics to system modelling. Unfortunately, system and software engineering disciplines do not enjoy pervasive use of mathematics in design activities. Most efforts in design improvement involve only the design process. Formal methods is simply the application of sound mathematical modelling and analysis techniques. Formal methods in engineering of computer-based systems is the application of mathematics to modelling systems and should be a central goal of systems engineering research.