Professor of System and Software Dependability
Professor Bloomfield of the City University of London, one of the world’s leading authorities on System and Software Dependability recently co-authored a scholarly study with Dr Anne Wetherilt of the Bank of England in which they observed that financial markets have evolved to become complex adaptive systems highly reliant on the communication speeds and processing power afforded by digital systems. Their failure, they argued could cause severe disruption to the provision of financial services and possibly the wider economy. In the report both Bloomfield and Wetherilt consider whether a perspective from the nuclear industry can provide additional insights. Read on!
Extended summary
Introduction
In fact, there are a very wide range of areas where the issues and practices in the nuclear industry might resonate with those raised by the evolution of computer-based trading and in this report we focus on:
- The approaches to systemic risk definition and evaluation;
- The definition of protection system parameters, risk controls and architecture;
- The need for trust in computer-based systems.
Approaches to systemic risk
We begin by examining a number of basic questions: how are the overall risks from a nuclear plant defined and evaluated, and how does this compare with financial markets.
We consider a serious nuclear incident that has the potential for the release of radioactivity with associated plant damage as a “systemic event” and hence make the link to a financial market crash: an event that both damages the market and also potentially impacts the wider financial system and the broader economy.
The development of the nuclear industry approach to safety has been driven by the need to engineer systems that provide social and economic benefits with tolerable risks, to evaluate and explain the nature and extent of these risks and to provide a framework that allows for scrutiny at varying levels of independence ranging from technical experts within the industry as well as pressure groups and those who, quite legitimately, hold very different values and worldviews.
Biography
Robin Bloomfield is Professor of Software and System Dependability at the City University, London. His research interests are in the dependability (reliability, safety, security) of computer-based systems. His work in safety in the past 20 yrs has combined policy formulation, technical consulting and underpinning research. Robin Bloomfield is involved in a wide range of projects and is currently the Industrial Liaison Director for a UK interdisciplinary research project on dependability (DIRC). He is a founder member of the consultancy Adelard and prior to this he worked in industry for the UK electricity utility (CEGB) where he was concerned with the design and validation of the control and safety systems of nuclear power stations. The post is shared with Peter Bishop and he spends part of his time with the consultancy Adelard that is co-located at City with the CSR..
Professor Bloomfield attended St John's College, Cambridge and holds an MA in Natural Sciences from Cambridge University and is also a chartered engineer. Prof Bloomfield has held a variety of professional and honorary posts. He has been chairman of the European Workshop on Industrial Computer Systems (EWICS), chairman of the Centre for Software Reliability Council, a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) advisory group on software important to nuclear safety, a member of UK Health and Safety Commission study group on software safety. He is currently a member of the CAA (Safety Regulation Group) Air Traffic System Safety Requirements Consultative Group. He is a member of the Information Assurance Advisory Council and a long term member of the Safecomp programme committee.
Research Interests:
- Dependability and safety of software-based systems
- Operational Risk
- Safety and dependability cases
- Conservative models of reliability prediction
- Development process modelling
- Industrial Liaison Director for DIRC
Details of work in progress and current interests can be found here
Publications:
Some recent publications:
- Bloomfield, R. E, "A descriptive model of failures in complex systems", Proceedings DSN 2003, Supplemental Volume, pp. B76-77, IEEE Computer Society, 2003.
- Bishop P.G. , Bloomfield R.E, Clement T.P., Guerra A.S.L and Jones C.C.M., "Integrity Static Analysis of COTS/SOUP", Proc SAFECOMP 2003, 23-26 Sept, pp. 63-76, Elsevier, Edinburgh, Scotland, 2003.
- Bloomfield, R.E and Littlewood, B., "Multi-legged Arguments: The Impact of Diversity upon Confidence in Dependability Arguments", Proceedings DSN 2003, pp. 25-34, IEEE Computer Society, ISBN 0-7695-1952-0, 2003.
Bishop P.G. and Bloomfield R.E., "Using a Log-normal Failure Rate Distribution for Worst Case Bound Reliability Prediction", ISSRE 2003, 17-20 Nov., pp. 237-245, Denver, USA, 2003
Contact Details:
Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Phone: +44 (0)20 7490 9453
Room: A229 College Building
