Towards effective model checking

Abstract

iii many years to come. I would like to thank one person specifically; the assistance of Joke Lammerink was invaluable in times of increased stress.Special thanks should go out to Pedro D'Argenio, who was my roommate for more than four and a half years. Although we had different opinions on several aspects of scientific life, e.g., tidiness, deadlines, theory or practice, students, education, etc., it kept the discussions lively and in all these years, we never had a quarrel. I really enjoyed his company and would like to thank him for all things he 'learned' me. At the same time, I should apologise for never being there when my telephone rang or when students came to pay me a visit. I regret it that Pedro will leave our group this summer, but I am sure that our friendship will survive the move to his home country.I would also like to thank Lex Heerink, with whom Pedro and I shared a room in the beginning of my Ph.D. student-ship. Among many other things, Lex made me enthusiastic for the IPA research school: not only for the contribution of this school to our Ph.D. education, but also for the 'social' significance of the school. Lex strongly believes that it is unhealthy to work all day. Since he left the group, the social 'bakje koffie' events have become very irregular. But (who's butt?) many of his running jokes are still being heard.Although I have never met him, I would like to thank René van Oostrum, who graciously sent me the L A T E X 2 ε sources of his Ph.D. Thesis. These sources contained a wealth of formatting tricks that I used to beautify the layout of this dissertation.I would like to thank my (little) brother Eric and Erik-Jan Elfferich for accepting the dubious honour of being my 'paranymphs'. I am confident that they will make a great performance on D-day.All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. I would like to thank Anja Beekhuis, Ellen Tiemens and Joke de Bruin. Although not contributing directly to this dissertation, our bowling evenings on Monday were really very effective to help me relax and forget the thesis for a moment. In the same 'league', I acknowledge my year in the board of the LAIOO; I would like to thank Jeanette Simon, Femmie de Vegt and Rob Roovers for the enjoyable, constructive and laughable meetings.All scientific help and support from my colleagues would probably have been useless, if I would not have a 'home base' to fall back to. Mischa, I would like to thank you for all your patience, consideration, support and love during the many months that I needed to finish this thesis. Many times it was very hard to return to this dissertation, while you and our little Daphne were so nearby to have fun with. I promise that I will make up for all the times that I was not there.

A Formal Verification Study on the Rotterdam Storm Surge Barrier

“…The interface was specified in Promela and model checking was applied using SPIN [1], revealing several flaws. A redesigned and redefined version was developed by RWS and subsequently studied by Ruys [10] again using Promela and SPIN, applying several abstraction techniques to fight state space explosion. One serious timing error was found.…”

Extensions of Statecharts with probability, time, and stochastic timing

“…The proof that the desired property is true, or the proof that it is false, is found automatically. (Still, the verification engineer has to enter the correct parameters to optimise the process; this may require quite some effort, as Ruys [90]…”