Interconnected Safe and Secure Systems (IS3)

Summary

Aims – Interconnected systems: Define a generic reference model of a “resilient organisation” as a socio-technical entity operating a cyber-physical system (CPS) dependent on other CPS operated by their respective operators. Explore the role of higher fidelity models as a way of ranking the alternative ways of implementing a given reference model and research if credible simplified models are suitable for interdependency and dependency analysis. Explore issues of scale and composition by applying the generic infrastructure model in a multi infrastructure system.

Aims – Safety and security: Develop an understanding of the problems and priorities of industry in security-informed and safety issues and an understanding of how decisions are made at the moment that involve trade-offs and the combination of objective and subjective judgements. Continue to develop the justification framework based on Claims, Arguments, Evidence which integrates objective and subjective evidence and explicitly combines informal reasoning with formal model-supported deduction. Research model-based techniques to analyse systematically the trade-offs and dependencies that are often complex technically, organisationally and institutionally.

Project members

Peter is an expert in Software Dependability. He was born in Bulgaria, graduated in Computer Engineering in 1982 from the National Technical University in Kiev (KPI), Ukraine, at the time part of the Soviet Union, and received his doctorate (Candidate of Sciences) from the same University in 1989. Before joining the Centre for Software Reliability (CSR) at City University in 1997 he worked for the Bulgarian Academy of Science. He was a visiting scientist in the Coordinated Science Laboratory (CSL) in the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign (US) and in LAAS – CNRS in Toulouse, France. He worked and consulted in the areas of computer and software dependability in several counties in Europe and in the US.

Professor Robin Bloomfield’s research interests are in the dependability (reliability, safety, security) of computer-based systems. His work in safety in the past 20 yrs has combined policy formulation, technical consulting and underpinning research. He is a founder member of the consultancy Adelard and prior to this he worked in industry for the UK electricity utility (CEGB) where he was concerned with the design and validation of the control and safety systems of nuclear power stations. The post is shared with Peter Bishop and he spends most of his time with the consultancy Adelard.

Professor Bloomfield attended St John’s College, Cambridge and holds an MA in Natural Sciences from Cambridge University and is also a chartered engineer.

Prof Bloomfield has held a variety of professional and honorary posts. He was an independent member of the UK Nuclear Safety Advisory Group (NUSAC) before it was disbanded and in 2007 and was a member of the UK Cabinet Office Information Assurance Research and Co-ordination Group. Recently he has been a member of the UK Treasury Engineering Infrastructure and Interdependencies Expert Group that supported the revised UK Infrastructure Plans.