Deriving Safety Cases from Automatically Constructed Proofs
Deriving Safety Cases from Automatically Constructed Proofs
Formal proofs provide detailed justification for the validity of claims and are widely used in formal software development methods. However, they are often complex and difficult to understand, because the formalism in which they are constructed and encoded is usually machine-oriented, and they may also be based on assumptions that are not justified. This causes concerns about the trustworthiness of using formal proofs as arguments in safety-critical applications. Here, we present an approach to develop safety cases that correspond to formal proofs found by automated theorem provers and reveal the underlying argumentation structure and top-level assumptions. We concentrate on natural deduction style proofs, which are closer to human reasoning than resolution proofs, and show how to construct the safety cases by covering the natural deduction proof tree with corresponding safety case fragments. We also abstract away logical book-keeping steps, which reduces the size of the constructed safety cases. We show how the approach can be applied to the proofs found by the Muscadet prover.
formal proofs, safety case, natural deduction, automated theorem provers
Basir, Nurlida
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Denney, Ewen
cce9ba14-a1fd-4a7b-8e90-fcb234b53e1d
Fischer, Bernd
0c9575e6-d099-47f1-b3a2-2dbc93c53d18
26 October 2009
Basir, Nurlida
dffded1c-37fe-46c1-8e07-ebd474acf37a
Denney, Ewen
cce9ba14-a1fd-4a7b-8e90-fcb234b53e1d
Fischer, Bernd
0c9575e6-d099-47f1-b3a2-2dbc93c53d18
Basir, Nurlida, Denney, Ewen and Fischer, Bernd
(2009)
Deriving Safety Cases from Automatically Constructed Proofs.
4th System Safety Conference 2009, London, United Kingdom.
26 - 28 Oct 2009.
Record type:
Conference or Workshop Item
(Paper)
Abstract
Formal proofs provide detailed justification for the validity of claims and are widely used in formal software development methods. However, they are often complex and difficult to understand, because the formalism in which they are constructed and encoded is usually machine-oriented, and they may also be based on assumptions that are not justified. This causes concerns about the trustworthiness of using formal proofs as arguments in safety-critical applications. Here, we present an approach to develop safety cases that correspond to formal proofs found by automated theorem provers and reveal the underlying argumentation structure and top-level assumptions. We concentrate on natural deduction style proofs, which are closer to human reasoning than resolution proofs, and show how to construct the safety cases by covering the natural deduction proof tree with corresponding safety case fragments. We also abstract away logical book-keeping steps, which reduces the size of the constructed safety cases. We show how the approach can be applied to the proofs found by the Muscadet prover.
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Deriving_Safety_Cases_from_Automatically_Constructed_Proofs.pdf
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Published date: 26 October 2009
Additional Information:
Event Dates: 26-28 October 2009
Venue - Dates:
4th System Safety Conference 2009, London, United Kingdom, 2009-10-26 - 2009-10-28
Keywords:
formal proofs, safety case, natural deduction, automated theorem provers
Organisations:
Electronic & Software Systems
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 271266
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/271266
PURE UUID: eba6be80-2708-4dde-89d8-ce663291fd39
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Date deposited: 14 Jun 2010 17:01
Last modified: 14 Mar 2024 09:27
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Contributors
Author:
Nurlida Basir
Author:
Ewen Denney
Author:
Bernd Fischer
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