| The
Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration in Dependability
aimed to address the dependability of computer-based
systems. Dependability is a deliberately broad term to encompass
many facets including reliability, security and availability.
The term "computer-based systems"
highlights the involvement of human participants. The interdisciplinary
approach includes, for example, sociologists and psychologists
as well as computer scientists and statisticians.
DIRC included
researchers from five British
Universities established in the area of dependable
computer systems and related topics. However, many staff
have a background in other disciplines, which gave
DIRC its
essential interdisciplinary flavour. The project was funded
by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
(EPSRC) and ran from
1st July, 2000 - 31st March, 2007. The six year funding
enabled DIRC to investigate the broad and
fundamental problems of creating dependable systems. In
July 2003 the ESPRC held a mid-term review of DIRC.
The input to that review is available
(341K pdf ).The feedback from the
Scientific portion of the review was very positive;
the management review was equally complimentary and is available
from the Project Director, Cliff Jones.
The Final Review of DIRC took place in March 2007 - the
project's input was a report that will be made available
here shortly.
Two new projects (INDEED
and TrAmS)
will take the DIRC ideas forward (a pointer to the TrAmS
web pages will appear here soon).
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