System dependability analysis: Main issues and possible solutions

In several application domains ranging from automotive to aerospace (Garro, Groß, Riestenpatt Gen. Richter and Tundis, 2013; Falcone, Garro and Tundis, 2014; Garro, Groß, Riestenpatt Gen. Richter and Tundis, 2012; Garro and Tundis, 2012b; Garro and Tundis, 2012c; Garro, Tundis and Chirillo, 2011), a great variety of systems are currently designed and developed by organizing and integrating existing and heterogeneous components. This design approach potentially offers many advantages in terms of time and cost reductions as promote the reusability of existing components and enable a natural parallel work organization in the system realization (Falcone, Garro, Longo and Spadafora, 2014); in fact, system components can be selected/customized/realized separately and then integrated so to obtain the overall system. However, the integration of system components is a challenging task whose criticality increases as the heterogeneity and complexity of the components increase. Thus, suitable engineering methods, tools and techniques need to be exploited to prevent and manage the risks arising from the integration of system components and, mainly, to avoid their occurrence in the late phases of the system development process which may result in a significant increase in the development cost.