A formal verification study on the Rotterdam storm surge barrier

Authors:
Ken Madlener;Sjaak Smetsers;Marko Van Eekelen
Affiliations:
Institute for Computing and Information Sciences, Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands;Institute for Computing and Information Sciences, Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands;Institute for Computing and Information Sciences, Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands and School of Computer Science, Open University of the Netherlands
Venue:
ICFEM'10 Proceedings of the 12th international conference on Formal engineering methods and software engineering
Year:
2010

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Abstract

This paper presents the results of the validation and verification of a crucial component of BOS, a large safety-critical system that decides when to close and open the Maeslantkering, a storm surge barrier near the city of Rotterdam in the Netherlands. BOS was specified in the formal language Z and model checking has been applied to some of its subsystems during its development. A lightweight model of the C++ code and the Z specification of the component was manually developed in the theorem prover PVS. As a result, some essential mismatches between specification and code were identified. We have also validated the Z specification itself by the use of challenge theorems, to assess particular design choices. Tools have been used to exhaustively search for inconsistencies between the original specification and the challenge theorems, which led to deeper issues with the specification itself.