A hierarchical approach for designing dependable systems

New constraints, such as the need for reducing the cost and the time-to-market, are forcing designers of safety-critical systems to exploit commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) components. To effectively deal with the specification and evaluation of such a kind of systems new design methodologies are required. We propose a new approach where COTS components building a safety critical system are first characterized through a detailed analysis process. The extracted information can then be exploited by a high-level analysis environment that allows evaluating a whole system with good accuracy and high efficiency.