Abstract: Human reliability and human factors are defined disciplines which have developed over the years and have been applied to a number of safety critical systems such as nuclear power plants, transportation systems, etc. The human reliability and human factors discipline for software dependability is less mature and more ill-defined. This presentation will briefly describe human reliability models and techniques as they are used in the nuclear field and contrast those to efforts in the field of software dependability.
Biography: Carol S. Smidts is a Full Professor at The Ohio State University with more than 30 years of research experience. Professor Smidts’ research lies in software reliability modeling and software test automation, human reliability analysis, instrumentation and control, and risk and reliability analysis, including distributed test facility design, reliability analysis of digital instrumentation and control systems, dynamic probabilistic risk assessment, and cybersecurity and cyber risk assessment for industrial control systems. She is an IEEE Fellow, AAIA Fellow was the conference co-chair of the IEEE International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering (2006 and 2013), IEEE High Assurance Systems Engineering (2008), is an Associate Editor for Software Testing Verification and Reliability, and has been awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award in 2019 by the Society for Reliability and Safety, in recognition to her pioneering contributions in the area of digital systems reliability.