A Review of Applications of Formal Specification in Safety-Critical System Development

Since the advent of the computer and computer programming there have been many attempts to improve the quality of the software systems developed. At various stages in this evolution of development techniques, processes, and methodologies, a review of the current trend in software development is conducted. One such current trend is in the realm of safety-critical system development. Safety-critical systems are characterized by the resulting potential of harm to or loss of life if such systems should fail during operation. A strategy applied in developing such systems is the use of formal specification techniques. Formal specification techniques are the application of rigorous techniques to assess the correctness of system design. The use of formal specification techniques in safety-critical system development has been in place for a number of decades and there have been multiple reviews and comparisons of the successful and failed application of formal specification techniques. This report reviews examples of the application of formal specification techniques in a number of application domains, with a focus on the types of error detection and correction associated with the particular technique. The benefit of this work is towards the assessment of the suitable of a specific formal specification technique with a particular problem domain.