Critical Systems Engineering, 2012

This course will introduce the concepts of critical systems engineering with a particular focus on socio-technical systems. The course will be organised as a single weekly class session of around 3 hours for 11 weeks in the 2nd semester.

The course lecturers will be Prof. Ian Sommerville and Dr John Rooksby.

Textbook

Software Engineering, 9th edition. Ian Sommerville. Addison Wesley, 2011

Learning outcomes

When you have completed this course you will:

• Understand the fundamental notion of system dependability and how dependability is affected by both social and technical factors
• Understand the notion of a socio-technical system
• Have been introduced to methods and techniques for achieving software dependability
• Understand how human and social factors may have both positive and negative influences on socio-technical system dependability

Assessment

There will be three components to the assessment of this course:

An examination to be held in May. This will be based on all course material and will make up 40% of the final assessment.

Coursework 1. This will be based on a technical element of the course.The total weight of this piece of coursework in the final assessment will be 30%. The coursework question will be distributed in class and is not available online.

Reading: The Mental Health Care Patient Management System
Reading: Dependability requirements engineering

Details of coursework 1

Coursework 2. This will be based on a socio-technical element of the course.The total weight of this piece of coursework in the final assessment will be 30%.

Details of coursework 2

Compulsory elements

Attendance at weekly class meetings.

Lecture topics

1. Introduction to critical systems, systems failure (6th Feb. IS & JR)
   Lecture 1: Critical Systems
   Lecture 2: Failure
   Reading: Security and Dependability
   Reading: Chapter 3 from 'The Human Contribution'. J. Reason. Ashgate: Farnham.
   
2. Dependability concepts, introduction to healthcare case study (16th Feb. IS)
   Lecture 3: Requirements Engineering
   Lecture 4: Security and dependability
   
3. Human error (23rd Feb, JR)
   Lecture 5: Human error and reliability 1
   Lecture 6: Human Error and reliability 2
   Reading (for 8th March): Synopsis from W Starbuck & M Farjoun (2005)
   Organisation at the Limit: Lessons from the Columbia Disaster. Oxford,
   Blackwell.
   
4. Critical systems specification, dependability requirements (1st March. IS)
   Lecture 7: Safety specification
   Lecture 8: Reliability and security specification
   Reading: Dependability and security specification
   
5. Learning from failure (8th March. JR)
   Lecture 9: Learning from failure 1
   Lecture 10: Learning from failure 2
   Reading (for 12th April): Karlene H Roberts (1990) Some Characteristics of One Type of High Reliability Organization. Organization Science, Vol.1, No.2, pp.160-176.
6. Lecture on 15th March. J. Rooksby. To be arranged.
7. Dependability engineering, fault tolerant system architectures (22nd March. IS)
   Lecture 11: Dependability engineering 1
   Lecture 12: Dependability engineering 2
   Reading: Dependability engineering
   
8. Organisations and organisational failure (12th April. JR)
   Lecture 13: Organisations and failure 1
   Lecture 14: Organisations and failure 2
   Reading: Anderson R,and Fuloria S (2010) On the security economics of electricity
   metering. WEIS 2010: Workshop on Economics of Information Security, June 2010, Harvard University, USA
   
9. Security engineering (19th April. IS)
   Lecture 15: Security engineering 1
   Lecture 16: Security engineering 2
   READING: Security engineering
10. Methods of dependability assurance, dependability cases (26th April. IS)
    Lecture 17: Static analysis and reliability testing
    Lecture 18: Security testing and dependability cases
    Reading: Dependability and security assurance
    
11. Critical infrastructure and the internet (3rd May. JR)
    Lecture 19: Dependable infrastructure 1
    Lecture 20: Dependable infrastructure 2