DIRC Research Conference 2005 details

 

DIRC- An Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration in Dependability of Computer-Based Systems

The DIRC (Dependability IRC) consortium is probably the largest and strongest single team of researchers in the world working in the area of system dependability. Led by Cliff Jones at Newcastle University, it brings together researchers from 5 leading UK research institutions, Newcastle, Edinburgh, York, City and Lancaster. The team has expertise in system fault-tolerance, requirements engineering, real-time systems, formal methods, social analysis, dependability measurement and HCI. The six year DIRC project will enable the collaboration to tackle broad and fundamental problems of creating dependable systems.

Uniquely, DIRC's focus is not just software dependability but the broader issue of system dependability where we are concerned with the environment where the system operates as well as the technical system itself. Because of the breadth of our view of system dependability, the interdisciplinary approach will include sociologists and psychologists as well as computer scientists, statisticians etc.

The DIRC project is structured into a number of project activities (PAs) each of which involves a subset (normally 2 or 3) of DIRC partners. These PAs last for up to 3 years with between 5 and 15 person years of effort in each activity.