Adopting formal methods in an industrial setting: The railways case

Abstract

The railway sector has seen a large number of successful applications of formal methods and tools. However, up-to-date, structured information about the industrial usage and needs related to formal tools in railways is limited. Two Shift2Rail projects, X2Rail-2 and ASTRail, have addressed this issue by performing a systematic search over the state of the art of formal methods application in railways to identify the best used practices. As part of the work of these projects, questionnaires on formal methods and tools have been designed to gather input and guidance on the adoption of formal methods in the railway domain. Even though the questionnaires were developed independently and distributed to different audiences, the responses show a certain convergence in the replies to the questions common to both. In this paper, we present a detailed report on such convergence, drawing some indications about methods and tools that are considered to constitute the most fruitful approaches to industrial adoption.