HARMONICS - EU FP7 project on the reliability assessment of modern nuclear I&C software

The overall objective of the EU FP7 project HARMONICS (Harmonised Assessment of Reliability of Modern Nuclear I&C Software) is to ensure that the nuclear industry has well founded and up-to-date methods and data for assessing software of computer-based safety systems. It will take advantage of the aforementioned advances to propose systematic and consistent, yet realistic and practical approaches for software verification, software safety justification and quantification of software failure rates. HARMONICS will mainly focus on the independent confidence building for software of I&C systems implementing Category A functions. Regarding software verification, the main objective is to provide direct evidence of software correctness. Main verification approaches to be investigated in HARMONICS are formal verification, statistical testing, and complexity analysis. Regarding justification frameworks, HARMONICS will investigate different approaches (goal-based, rule-based, and risk-informed approaches) to justify category A systems and software, to identify their strengths and weaknesses, applicability domains, and how they can complement one another. For the software quantification, an analytical approach is promoted to systematically define and identify critical software fault modes which require further attention. Different types of case studies will be needed to cover the different types of software that can be found in systems implementing category A functions. HARMONICS has started in January 2011 will end in 2014. A collaboration project in China, called RAVONSICS (Reliability and V&V of Nuclear Safety I&C Software), has started in 2012.