A Framework for Dependability Consensus Building
and In-Operation Assurance


Yutaka Matsun
+ and Shuichiro Yamamoto 

Strategy Office, Information and Communication Headquarters
Nagoya University, Japan

{matsu, yamamotosui}@icts.nagoya-u.ac.jp


 

Abstract

We present a framework for dependability consensus building and in-operation assurance for information systems, and show the current prototype implementation. Today, information systems are ever changing systems: they are always modified and updated to satisfy user's changing requirements and deal with environmental changes. Furthermore, information systems must cope with system failures and continue to be dependable during operational phase. Unfortunately, however, as recently many serious failures in information systems have been reported, it is becoming much difficult to assure the dependability of information systems especially in the operational phases. For this problem, we observe that there should be a framework for adapting to changes and failures that integrates conventional requirement elicitation, risk analysis, and assurance methods during the whole lifecycle of the information system. Our proposed framework consists of a process cycle for consensus building among stakeholders with conventional requirement elicitation methods, risk analysis methods, and assurance cases, documents for system assurance recently widely used in safety and other areas. This paper explains the process lifecycle, a case study using the cycle, and a prototype implementation for in-operation assurance.

Keywords: Dependability, Assurance Case, Risk Analysis, Service Continuity, Requirement Elicitation

 

+: Corresponding author: Yutaka Matsuno

    Project Lecturer, Strategy Office, Information and Communications Headquarters, Nagoya University,
    Furo-cho, Nagoya 464-8601 Japan, Tel: +81-80-4172-6454

 

Journal of Wireless Mobile Networks, Ubiquitous Computing, and Dependable Applications (JoWUA),

Vol. 4, No. 1, pp. 118-134, March 2013 [pdf]