FORMATS 2008 — Formal Modelling and Analysis of Timed Systems

Objectives and Scope of the Conference

Timing aspects of systems from a variety of computer science domains have been treated independently by different communities. Researchers interested in semantics, verification and performance analysis study models such as timed automata and timed Petri nets. the digital design community focus on propagation and switching delays while designers of embedded controllers have to take account for the time taken by controllers to compute their responses after sampling the environment.

Timing related questions in these separate disciplines do have their particularities. However, there is a growing awareness that there are basic problems that are common to all of them. In particular, all these sub-disciplines treat systems whose behaviour depends upon combinations of logical and temporal constraints; namely, constraints on the temporal distances between occurrences of events.

The aim of FORMATS is to promote the study of fundamental and practical aspects of timed systems, and to bring together researchers from different disciplines that share interests in modelling and analysis of timed systems. Typical topics include (but are not limited to):

- Foundations and Semantics: Theoretical foundations of timed systems and languages; comparison between different models (timed automata, timed Petri nets, hybrid automata, timed process algebra, max-plus algebra, probabilistic models).
- Methods and Tools: Techniques, algorithms, data structures, and software tools for analyzing timed systems and resolving temporal constraints (scheduling, worst-case execution time analysis, optimisation, model-checking, testing, constraint solving, etc).
- Applications: Adaptation and specialization of timing technology in application domains in which timing plays an important role (real-time software, hardware circuits, and problems of scheduling in manufacturing and telecommunication).