Architectural Challenges for "Ambient Dependability"

This paper presents the author’s view of the gaps, the challenges and the potentials that exist today when dealing with terms like dependability, trustworthiness, confidence etc. applied to computerized systems and in particular to complex distributed infrastructures and/or services, in contexts where it is no more possible to cope only with accidental faults. Both the "architecture" and the "system" have to be reconsidered from many points of view, if we want than our society can move through what is called "ambient intelligence" to reach what we would like to see, that is "ambient dependability".