Trust by design -- in praise of modularization: a case study
2026-06-15 • Software Engineering
Software Engineering
AI summaryⓘ
The authors talk about new ways to make sure groups of adaptive systems stay safe and reliable. They suggest three ideas: focusing on how events cause effects locally, using special timing-related logic to check these events, and building big system properties from smaller parts. They show a case study highlighting how breaking systems into parts helps trust them from the start. The authors plan to create a full theory based on these concepts later.
collective adaptive systemsformal methodsverification techniquescause and effecttemporal logicmodularizationsystem propertiestrust by designcomponent composition
Authors
Peter Fettke, Wolfgang Reisig
Abstract
Ensuring that collective adaptive systems remain safe, reliable, and trustworthy requires measures that transcend so far established formal methods, and in particular established verification techniques. In this contribution, we suggest three such measures: (1) conceptual means: runs with locally confined cause and effect of events, (2) temporal logic like verification techniques that respect and exploit such runs, (3) composing system properties from properties of components. This contribution presents a case study which particularly focuses on the benefits of modularization for achieving trust by design. Further work will develop a full-fledged theory for the presented ideas.