Special issue on Rich Models, EU-COST Action IC0901 Rich-Model Toolkit

Abstract

The main goal of The Rich Model Toolkit initiative was to explore directions and techniques for making automated reasoning (including analysis and synthesis) applicable to a wider range of problems, as well as making them easier to use by researchers, software developers, hardware designers, and information system users and developers. The Rich Model Toolkit was funded by the European Union as COST Action IC0901 between 2009 and 2013. The action included the participation of researchers from over 20 countries and 50 research groups. The unifying idea of Rich Models is to explore precise mathematical and formal models of key aspects of our infrastructure, developing algorithms, tools, and common standardized formats. The networking activities funded by the action—particularly workshops, visits from young scientists to hosting research groups, and summer schools—aimed to establish connections between different tools, methodologies, and communities. The objective was to build a unified infrastructure to clearly define Rich Models, to introduce standardized representation formats, and incorporates a number of automated reasoning tools with the ability to establish communication between these formats. During the action benchmarks and competitions for automated reasoning and verification were created, as well as several research results on decision procedures, analysis and synthesis. These activities included competitions on the verification of Numerical Transitions Systems and the participation of researchers from the action in the development of Horn-Clauses as a common representation of several verification problems. After the end of the action, we invited researchers to submit significant contributions to this special issue of Acta Informatica. After two round of reviews from several experts the following four papers were selected for publication. We thank all reviewers for their commitment and dedication.