The Australian Computer Society

Sponsored by the ACS's Technical Committee on Safety Critical Systems and
the Victorian Chapter of the Systems Engineering Society of Australia.

The Australian Computer Society's Technical Committee on Safety Critical Systems held its 5th National Workshop on Safety Critical Systems and Software (SCS 2000) in Melbourne on 24 November 2000. The workshop was held in collaboration with Victorian Chapter of the Systems Engineering Society of Australia.

The full-day workshop consisted of a series of practical experience reports and an expert panel discussion session on the use of Commercial- Off-The-Shelf (COTS) Software in Safety Critical Systems. The workshop featured a keynote address by Felix Redmill, a leading international authority on the new functional safety standard IEC 61508. Felix also delivered a one-day course on IEC 61508 in Melbourne the day before.

This year's workshop papers included reports on safety case development, on techniques for hazard discovery, and on the use of COTS. The papers span many industries, including defence, railways and the process industries. This year's workshop features papers and presenters from Australia, New Zealand, the US and the UK. Click here for the program.

The ACS held similar workshops in Brisbane in 1996, in Sydney in 1997, in Adelaide in 1998 and in Canberra in 1999. Each event attracted more than 35 participants nationally and internationally.

For questions about the SCS 2000 Workshop, please contact:

On-line outputs from previous workshops:

• SCS'99 workshop in Canberra
• SCS'98 workshop in Adelaide
• the tutorial on formal methods from SCS'98
• SCS'97 workshop in Sydney
• a report on the SCS'97 panel discussion on software safety standards
• copies of the SCS'97 papers