Proceedings of the Workshop on FORmal methods for the quantitative Evaluation of Collective Adaptive SysTems

TL;DR

This paper discusses the importance of formal methods and quantitative analysis for designing and verifying large-scale Collective Adaptive Systems, emphasizing their unique challenges and the need for scalable approaches.

Contribution

It introduces FORECAST, a workshop aimed at raising awareness of formal methods tailored for the analysis of complex, large-scale CAS.

Findings

Highlighting the complexity of CAS behavior

Need for scalable formal verification methods

Promotion of interdisciplinary collaboration

Abstract

Collective Adaptive Systems (CAS) consist of a large number of spatially distributed heterogeneous entities with decentralised control and varying degrees of complex autonomous behaviour that may be competing for shared resources even when collaborating to reach common goals. It is important to carry out thorough quantitative modelling and analysis and verification of their design to investigate all aspects of their behaviour before they are put into operation. This requires combinations of formal methods and applied mathematics which moreover scale to large-scale CAS. The primary goal of FORECAST is to raise awareness in the software engineering and formal methods communities of the particularities of CAS and the design and control problems which they bring.