Early bird bookings for SSS'24 are now open. Book before 15th December for a £100 discount! Full details at https://scsc.uk/e1007

There have been many significant announcements about AI safety, the biggest of which is from the US today. This initiative has potentially huge consequences for those developing and deploying AI worldwide. It is also the week of the UK government AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park which could have some useful outputs. Note that at SSS'24 in February we have a special "Can we make safe AI" session with talks and panel of experts, https://scsc.uk/e1007 All our 1-day seminars are AI-themed next year too, starting with the first one in April. AI will continue to make the news...

If you would like to present a poster at SSS'24 please contact mike.parsons@scsc.uk. A poster is an opportunity to present your work in an informal way. There will be 2 dedicated poster sessions at the event and any associated abstracts or papers can be published in the symposium proceedings book. See https://scsc.uk/e1007 for more details.

The recent air traffic control disruption at NATS due to a flight plan has made many headlines and details of the causes are now being made public. It looks like some unexpected data in the plan caused the primary and backup software to fail. Both the upcoming SCSC Working Group meetings on Data Safety and Complex Systems will discuss the incident. However we shouldn't forget that the whole arrangement of aircraft and crews, rosters and allowable hours contributed to the problems - highlighting an astonishingly fragile complex system (in fact a service). From a robustness perspective, there should have been contingencies at every level so that the knock-on effects were reduced. We await the formal reports into the matter but there are clear lessons already: expect the unexpected and have backups which are diverse in nature.

The government has published its 2023 edition of the National Risk Register. It makes interesting reading - there are quite a few systems-related risks, for instance: Rail Accident, Aviation Collision, Malicious Drone Incident and Deliberate disruption of UK space systems and space-based services. It is probably worth considering if your risk register should include some of these wider risks...

The Safety Critical Systems Symposium SSS'24 will be held 13th - 15th February 2024 in-person in Bristol, UK.

A first call for abstracts has been announced.

Abstracts can cover any systems safety area, and industrially-relevant topics are especially welcome.

Please note abstracts have to be submitted by 30th June 2023 to mike.parsons@scsc.uk