This report describes the main results and achievements of the substantial programme of R&D in Safety-Critical Systems funded by the Department of Trade and Industry and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council which ran from October 1991 to early 1998. In all there were 32 projects involving some 99 organisations. The total investment by industry, DTI and EPSRC has been of the order of £28.4m of which about half has been contributed by industry. The technical scope has been correspondingly broad.

The report (the production of which has been funded by DTI) highlights the most interesting and useful results. It cannot, however, cover everything that has been done and the reader is encouraged to follow up the multitude of references to general papers and detailed project reports in Appendix A. That appendix also includes the name of a contact who can be approached for more substantial enquiries about the results of each project and possible commercial or other exploitation of the results.

The descriptions have been based on extracts from project reports or on text supplied specially by the projects. The source of each contribution is identified in Appendix D. The accuracy of the descriptions obviously depends on the accuracy of these sources and on the vagaries of the process of compilation and editing. The reader should obviously go to the original sources and other references before adopting any of the technology described here or incurring any significant costs.