MEADEP and its applications in evaluating dependability for air traffic control systems

MEADEP (measure dependability) is a user-friendly dependability evaluation tool for measurement-based analysis of computing systems including both hardware and software. Features of MEADEP are: a data processor for converting data in various formats (records with a number of fields stored in a commercial database format) to the MEADEP format, a statistical analysis module for graphical data presentation and parameter estimation, a graphical modeling interface for constructing reliability block and Markov diagrams, and a model solution module for availability/reliability calculation with graphical parametric analysis. Use of the tool on failure data from measurements can provide quantitative assessments of dependability for critical systems, while greatly reducing requirements for specialized skills in data processing, analysis, and modeling from the user. MEADEP has been applied to evaluate dependability for several air traffic control systems (ATC) and results produced by MEADEP have provided valuable feedback to the program management of these critical systems.