[SystemSafety] CFP: SASSUR 2016

[Peter Bernard Ladkin]

On 2016-04-19 08:22 , Jose Luis de la Vara wrote:
> 5th International Workshop on Next Generation of System Assurance Approaches for Safety-Critical
> Systems
> 
> Trondheim, Norway, September 20th, 2016 https://www.ntnu.edu/web/safecomp2016/sassur-2016
> 
> In conjunction with the International Conference on Computer Safety, Reliability and Security, SAFECOMP

While I support people getting together to talk about system assurance for safety-critical systems,
I have reservations about the predominance of academics on the programme committee. There's just one
person from industry!

Back in 2008, there was a huge discussion within the SAFECOMP programme committee about the focus of
SAFECOMP. There was some discussion as to why industrial contributions were sparse. Alberto Pasquini
from Deep Blue volunteered the reason that SAFECOMP was looked upon as an academic conference, and
people from industry generally didn't think it was relevant to them. There was uproar from the
academics on the PC. Jens Braband agreed with Alberto. As someone with his feet firmly planted in
both academia and industry, Jens is better placed than most to judge the matter. I went through a
lot of SAFECOMP paper lists to show people that indeed the published papers came largely from
academia and academic-type research labs.

Some people took the view that SAFECOMP had tried to solicit industrial contributions, but they
generally weren't of a "very high" intellectual standard. Many, including myself and Jens, argued
that there are reasons for how industrial papers are written (for example, intellectual-property
worries, and lawyers also have a big say), so they shouldn't necessarily be judged using the same
criteria as for academic papers in which people can write more freely. In the subsequent eight
years, SAFECOMP has adjusted somewhat to the two "cultures" of paper writing, but it's still heavily
academic.

With a few notable exceptions, people writing real assurance cases for real systems are not
academics. With a few notable exceptions, academics have little experience writing real assurance
cases for real systems. Safety is generally not an academic subject. It is a practical subject, with
a lot of practitioners. We might do well to keep that more evidently in mind when putting together PCs.

PBL

Prof. Peter Bernard Ladkin, Faculty of Technology, University of Bielefeld, 33594 Bielefeld, Germany
Je suis Charlie
Tel+msg +49 (0)521 880 7319  www.rvs.uni-bielefeld.de





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