So, our European colleagues have been giving their opinions on how Brexit should proceed http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/25/eu-emergency-talks-brexit-berlin . To French colleagues Ayrault and Macron, Luxembourg colleague Asselborn, EC President Juncker and local boy Steinmeier, I say: how about you back off a little? You’re not helping. The UK is obviously in the middle of a political crisis. It happens.…
[Ingo Rolle is the Secretary of the German National Committee responsible for matters concerning IEC 61508 as well as the German National Committee responsible for matters concerning IEC 62443. This is an invited essay. PBL] IEC 61508:2010 is the international standard for functional safety of electrical, electronic and programmable electronic systems. It applies to the…
There is a considerable challenge in raising the awareness of engineering-plant personnel about the criticality of the computer systems they might be using. We addressed some electricity blackouts at the Safety-Critical Systems Symposium 2016. In the 2003 North American blackout, the malfunction of two computer systems on which operators and oversight personnel relied was causal…
There are a few different notions of risk used in dependability engineering. One notion, used in finance and in engineering safety, is from De Moivre (1712, De Mensura Sortis in the Proceedings of the Royal Society) and is (A) the expected value of loss (people in engineering say “combination of severity and likelihood”). A second…