An Open System for Dependable System Validation and Verification Support - The DECOS Generic Test Bench

The integrated EU-project DECOS (Dependable Embedded Components and Systems) aims at developing an integrated architecture for embedded systems to reduce life-cycle costs and to increase dependability of embedded applications in respect to a comparable federated architecture. To facilitate the certification process of DECOS-based applications, the DECOS Generic Test Bench has been developed which constitutes a framework to support incremental validation and verification as well as modular certification on the basis of "generic" safety cases. The safety cases are based on validation plans (v-plans) comprising the steps to validate the requirements (called V&V activities) in order to get the evidence. The Test Bench framework is designed as an open system: it easily integrates with external systems, such as existing safety standards, the development process, external V&V tools and the certification process.