1. The origins of dependability and AltaRica

By the end of the twentieth century, engineers were realizing that it was imperative to make systems robust to any failures that might occur. Dependability was thus born, and rapidly became a discipline in its own right. Functional safety engineers must ensure that their systems function properly, and to this end they have an arsenal of analyses at their disposal, including fault trees, failure mode analysis and dysfunctional analysis. Many other methods have also been developed for specific studies.

As systems become more complex, the way in which dependability engineers work is also affected. Systems become more complicated to analyze, and manual calculations become tedious, leading to a need for automation. To meet this need, the industrial world is turning its attention to the development of software to help engineers analyze malfunctions and model system behavior....