Formal Methods, Computational Intelligence and Constraint Programming for Software Assurance Workshop (FMCICA 2014)
http://www.lac.inpe.br/fmcica/


Co-located with the 14th International Conference on Computational Science and Its Applications (ICCSA 2014)
June 30 - July 3, 2014
Guimaraes, Portugal

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OBJECTIVES AND SCOPE

Mathematical rigor related to Formal Methods enables the analysis of a system at any phase of the software development lifecycle. However, it is still necessary that efforts are devoted to the application of Formal Methods in practice and in large scale. Computational Intelligence is another area of research that can improve Software Assurance. The use of machine learning to generate software test cases and to find defects in software, and the application of data mining to software formal verification are some examples of Computational Intelligence supporting the improvement of Software Assurance. Constraint Programming has been used in the context of software verification. Recent studies have been trying to combine Formal Methods and Constraint Programming to produce high quality software products but there is still much research to do in these fields. The goals of this workshop are two:

1.) Encouraging the use of Formal Methods in practice and in large scale, by means of reports of experiences aimed at improving Software Assurance (Software Quality Assurance, Software Quality Control, Software Reliability, Software Verification and Validation);

2.) Promoting interdisciplinarity with the combination of Formal Methods, Computational Intelligence, and Constraint Programming aiming at increasing Software Assurance.


Topics of interest include but are not limited to:

- Formal Methods and Constraint Programming for Software Verification and Validation
- Formal Methods for real-time and critical systems
- Formal Methods for service-oriented systems
- Model Checking and Theorem Proving for test case generation
- Formal testing
- Model Checking for software inspection
- Methodologies for Software Assurance based on Formal Methods, and/or Computational Intelligence, and/or Constraint Programming
- Probabilistic analysis using Model Checking and Theorem Proving
- Artificial Neural Networks for Software Verification and Validation
- Machine Learning for Software Verification and Validation
- Data Mining for Software Verification and Validation
- Data Mining in software metrics
- Tools and frameworks to support the formal development of software systems
- Experience reports of application of Formal Methods, Computational Intelligence, and Constraint Programming for improving Software Assurance (Software Quality Assurance, Software Quality Control, Software Reliability, Software Verification and Validation)

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IMPORTANT DATES

March 1, 2014: Extended deadline for Abstract and Full Paper submission
April 10, 2014: Notification of acceptance/rejection and early registration starts
May 6, 2014: Early registration ends
May 6, 2014: Submission deadline for the final version of the accepted papers
June 30 - July 3, 2014: ICCSA 2014 Conference and FMCICA 2014 Workshop

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SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

FMCICA 2014 asks for high quality, original and unpublished work in the 3 main research areas (Formal Methods, Computational Intelligence and Constraint Programming) related to the workshop. The following categories of papers are accepted by FMCICA:

1.) Case Study papers describe the application in isolation but also together of the 3 main research areas aiming to improve any aspect of Software Assurance in the context of development of real software systems. This is the main objective of the workshop. Such articles should contain, among other things: a brief description of the system to be treated, the reasons for the application of the research to the case study, the methodology/research itself, the difficulties/easinesses in applying the methodology/research regarding the development process of the software system in the industrial or government context (case studies from industry or government institutions are welcome), ability to generalize the results to other application domains;
2.) Research papers with theoretical foundations demonstrating advances in Formal Methods, Computational Intelligence and Constraint Programming applied to any aspect for improving Software Assurance. The combination of the 3 main research areas, promoting their interdisciplinarity, is encouraged;
3.) Tool/Framework papers present a new tool/framework, or an extension of an existing tool/framework. Such papers should provide the problem addressed by the tool/framework, a short description of the theoretical foundations related to the tool/framework, the software architecture, the main functionalities of the tool/framework, usability aspects, and a short comparison against similar tools/frameworks. It is interesting that the tool/framework is available via web with information for its use, at least during the period of evaluation by reviewers.

All accepted papers will be published in the Springer-Verlag Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) volumes. Papers should be between 10 to 16 pages in length. Authors can obtain additional information about the process of paper submission, via the Electronic Submission System, about formatting of the paper according to the LNCS templates on: http://www.iccsa.org/authors-instructions. FMCICA is within the category "General Tracks/Theme Papers".

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FMCICA PROGRAM COMMITTEE CHAIR

Valdivino Alexandre de Santiago Júnior, National Institute for Space Research, Brazil

FMCICA PROGRAM COMMITTEE

Adenilso da Silva Simão, University of São Paulo, Brazil
Alexandre Cabral Mota, Federal University of Pernambuco, Brazil
Ana Cristina Vieira de Melo, University of São Paulo, Brazil
Ateet Bhalla, Oriental Institute of Science and Technology, India
Claudia Frydman, Laboratoire des Sciences de l'Information et des Systèmes, France
Cormac J. Sreenan, University College Cork, Ireland
G. Veereswara Swamy, Gitam University, India
Gianfranco Rossi, University of Parma, Italy
Ioannis Parissis, Laboratoire de Conception et d'Intégration des Systèmes, France
João Saraiva, University of Minho, Portugal
José Creissac Campos, University of Minho, Portugal
Maximiliano Cristiá, French-Argentine International Center for Information Systems and Sciences, Argentina
Nandamudi Lankalapalli Vijaykumar, National Institute for Space Research, Brazil
Rafael Duarte Coelho dos Santos, National Institute for Space Research, Brazil
Sofiène Tahar, Concordia University, Canada
Wilkerson de Lucena Andrade, Federal University of Campina Grande, Brazil
Yassine Lassoued, University College Cork, Ireland
Ying Wu, University College Cork, Ireland