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Determinism is a key concern in the certification of software for safety-critical systems. In this paper, we evaluate the role of determinism in certification standards, using airborne software as example. We analyze and speculate how the requirements and underlying concepts related to determinism can be adapted for Machine Learning algorithms.In addition, we systematically identify and analyze a large set of factors that contribute to variations of behavior in machine learning systems across multiple levels. Our suggestion is that such variability factors are handled in a similar fashion to failure modes in current software and systems development.We propose that the method followed and the identified set of factors is taken as a step towards a global catalog that can assist both developers and assessors in attaining certifiable machine learning systems.

This paper describes a tool-supported method for the formal verification of Ada programs. It presents ATOS, a tool that automati- cally extracts a model in SPIN from an Ada Program, together with a set of properties that state the correctness of the model. ATOS is also capable of extracting properties from user-provided annotations in Ada programs, inspired by the Spark Annotation language. The goal of ATOS is to help in the verification of sequential and concurrent Ada pro- grams based on model checking. The paper introduces the details of the proposed mechanisms, as well as the results of experimental validation, through a case study., Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT)

This paper introduces a rigorous methodology for requirements specification of systems that react to external stimulus by evolving through different operational modes. In each mode different functionalities are provided. Starting from a classical state-machine specification, the envisaged methodology interprets each state as a different mode of operation endowed with an algebraic specification of the corresponding functionality. Specifications are given in an expressive variant of hybrid logic which is, at a later stage, translated into first-order logic to bring into scene suitable tool support. The paper’s main contribution is to pro- vide rigorous foundations for the method, framing specification logics as institutions and the translation process as a comorphism between them., Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT)