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July 11, 2006, 12:54
Writing The weblog contains primarily commentary on and analysis of safety-related matters with complex systems, especially those involving digital…
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July 11, 2006, 14:29
These pages are the responsibility of the Working Group in Computer Networks and Distributed Systems in the Faculty of Technology (German: AG RVS, Technische…
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January 26, 2011, 15:00
This page contains the site table of contents. Use it to quickly find content on this website.

Blog Posts

Category: Uncategorized (2)
- Another Glitch, Same Old Moral by: Peter Ladkin
  February 23, 2012, 08:04
  Martyn Thomas chaired a committee convened by the UK Royal Academy of Engineering on infrastructure vulnerabilities to GPS disturbances. The committee reported…
- Tertiary Education - A Comparison over Countries by: Peter Ladkin
  January 15, 2012, 12:15
  Not mine this time (the one I wrote in 1997 is still being referenced, but is out of date because the German degree system has changed) but the OECD's from…
Category: Academia and Science (9)
Policy and Politics in Academia and Science
- Michael by: Peter Ladkin
  January 10, 2012, 22:25
  Michael. Everyone knew him as Michael. I was a freshman at Oxford in mathematics, interested in logic. I had been reading Chomsky in my first quarter…
- The Definition of Risk - Yet Again by: Peter Ladkin
  November 16, 2011, 09:46
  In a message to the York Safety-Critical Systems Mailing List, Tracy White recounted a discussion with someone from the field of “Risk Management” who was…
- John McCarthy by: Peter Ladkin
  November 11, 2011, 13:58
  John McCarthy has died. The great John McCarthy. Brilliant and entertaining, fun to be around, accessible unlike many of his stature, who carried an aura about…
- Coda, Interdisciplinary Work, and Scientific Publishing by: Peter Ladkin
  August 15, 2011, 10:29
  It sounds like a mish-mash, doesn't it? will probably read like a mish-mash, too. Because true interdisciplinary work always looks that way, I think. That…
- The Internet as an Educational Tool by: Peter Ladkin
  September 1, 2010, 19:47
  Time was, we thought that people, students, who wanted answers to questions, could come to our office hours, ask, and be answered. Then we thought that…
- Oxford Up There Again by: Peter Ladkin
  May 17, 2010, 08:55
  The Times has written a blog-article on the proportion of the new UK government who went to Oxford (in fairness, I must point out that some proportion went to…
- Reform of the Reform by: Peter Ladkin
  November 30, 2009, 20:18
  Well, folks, the promised "reform of the reform" has started. In my last post, I mentioned some of the troubles the transition from traditional german Diplom…
- To Be a Master by: Peter Ladkin
  November 26, 2009, 02:29
  The university where I teach, the University of Bielefeld, is forty years old this month. It was founded as a «reform university». Everything was in one huge…
- Two Birds of Different Feathers by: Peter Ladkin
  November 25, 2009, 04:00
  I was saddened yesterday to learn of the death of John Stallings exactly one year before. John was a mercurial Berkeley mathematician of occasional genius who,…
Category: Applying Logics (4)
- Another Glitch, Same Old Moral by: Peter Ladkin
  February 23, 2012, 08:04
  Martyn Thomas chaired a committee convened by the UK Royal Academy of Engineering on infrastructure vulnerabilities to GPS disturbances. The committee reported…
- Michael by: Peter Ladkin
  January 10, 2012, 22:25
  Michael. Everyone knew him as Michael. I was a freshman at Oxford in mathematics, interested in logic. I had been reading Chomsky in my first quarter…
- John McCarthy by: Peter Ladkin
  November 11, 2011, 13:58
  John McCarthy has died. The great John McCarthy. Brilliant and entertaining, fun to be around, accessible unlike many of his stature, who carried an aura about…
- Swinburne's Bayesian Arguments by: Peter Ladkin
  January 4, 2008, 16:00
  I recently looked through Nature’s List of Top 50 Science Blogs and ended up reading quite a lot of the Good Math, Bad Math Weblog of Mark Chu-Carroll, a…
Category: Computer Systems and Networks (1)
- We Had An Accident by: Peter Ladkin
  March 2, 2010, 16:35
  On Friday evening, 26th February, we suffered an accident. In what is known as the Swiss Cheese Model, stemming in all but name from Jim Reason, all the holes…
Category: Miscelleneaous (2)
- The British Phone-Hacking Scandal by: Peter Ladkin
  July 27, 2011, 20:16
  I've been watching the phone-hacking scandal closely, even to the point of reading the Guardian's timeline of the parliamentary debate last Wednesday (20th…
- Engineering Discussions of Discussions: The York List after 15 Years by: Peter Ladkin
  April 7, 2010, 12:23
  The archives of the University of York Safety-Critical Systems Mailing List start on 19 May, 1995, 15 years ago. I took a look at some of the older…
Category: Analytic Philosophy (5)
- Michael by: Peter Ladkin
  January 10, 2012, 22:25
  Michael. Everyone knew him as Michael. I was a freshman at Oxford in mathematics, interested in logic. I had been reading Chomsky in my first quarter…
- John McCarthy by: Peter Ladkin
  November 11, 2011, 13:58
  John McCarthy has died. The great John McCarthy. Brilliant and entertaining, fun to be around, accessible unlike many of his stature, who carried an aura about…
- Screwy Reasoning and Its Study by: Peter Ladkin
  September 7, 2009, 22:14
  Those of us interested in commercial aviation accidents have to deal with a lot of what I shall call screwy reasoning. Last week, I read a September 2…
- The Provenance of Intelligent Design Creationism by: Peter Ladkin
  July 20, 2006, 09:42
  As I pointed out yesterday when considering a critique of Swinburne, a lot of popular science blogging is concerned with the arguments for intelligent-design…
- Swinburne's Bayesian Arguments by: Peter Ladkin
  July 19, 2006, 13:01
  I recently looked through Nature's List of Top 50 Science Blogs and ended up reading quite a lot of the Good Math, Bad Math Weblog of Mark Chu-Carroll, a…
Category: Interesting Stuff (1)
- We Had An Accident by: Peter Ladkin
  March 2, 2010, 16:35
  On Friday evening, 26th February, we suffered an accident. In what is known as the Swiss Cheese Model, stemming in all but name from Jim Reason, all the holes…
Category: Aircraft Accidents (17)
- The Accident to Qantas Flight 72, VH-QPA, in October 2008 by: Peter Ladkin
  December 21, 2011, 11:32
  The Airbus A330-303 VH-QPA experienced uncommanded nose-down pitch commands while in cruise at FL370. Lots of unsecured people were thrown to the ceiling,…
- Concorde, Ten Years On, Part 2 by: Peter Ladkin
  December 9, 2010, 21:55
  The Concorde accident to F-BTSC on 25 July 2000 is about as well understood as to causes as any accident can be. There is also, unusually, a more or less…
- Concorde, Ten Years On by: Peter Ladkin
  December 6, 2010, 12:00
  I understand that Simon Foreman observed at a meeting of the RAeS Law Group on 28 April this year on the criminalisation of aviation accidents, reported here…
- Simulators and Veridicality in Airline Training and Pilot Currency Checks by: Peter Ladkin
  September 9, 2010, 07:47
  In his note in RISKS-26.15, Peter Wayner refers to the article Simulator training flaws tied to airline crashes in USA Today, 31 August 2010 (WWW version),…
- Fully-Automatic Execution of Critical Manoeuvres in Airline Flying by: Peter Ladkin
  September 3, 2010, 08:23
  David Learmount's semi-annual review of commercial air accidents has just appeared in Flight International (3-9 August, p34). There were three accidents to…
- Malware and the August 2008 Madrid Spanair Take-Off Accident by: Peter Ladkin
  August 27, 2010, 08:38
  On 20 August 2008, a MD-82 aircraft of the airline Spanair crashed on takeoff (TO) from Madrid-Barajas airport. The high-lift devices on the wing had not been…
- Understanding Aerodynamics of Stalls by: Peter Ladkin
  July 28, 2010, 12:19
  Recently, most commercial transport airplane manufacturers have been revisiting their FCOM procedures for “stall recovery” (actually, procedures avoiding…
- Screwy Reasoning and Its Study by: Peter Ladkin
  September 7, 2009, 22:14
  Those of us interested in commercial aviation accidents have to deal with a lot of what I shall call screwy reasoning. Last week, I read a September 2…
- Thoughts on Engineering Communication (with a bit on Ice Particle Icing and AF447) by: Peter Ladkin
  August 21, 2009, 00:25
  I have been thinking recently about professional engineering communication. I was reminded once again of the lack of consensus by Nancy Leveson's comment…
- AF447: Issues Clarified by the BEA Report by: Peter Ladkin
  August 4, 2009, 20:38
  There are some significant issues which are clarified by the BEA's preliminary factual report, issued at the beginning of July: specifically the uncertainties…
- Avoiding Disaster on Takeoff by: Peter Ladkin
  July 24, 2009, 04:17
  It happened again! On 13 December 2008, a Boeing 767-39H suffered a tailstrike on takeoff at Manchester Airport. A tailstrike can occur on takeoff when the…
- Software Engineering Ethics - The Sequel by: Peter Ladkin
  July 22, 2009, 05:23
  Further to the Gotterbarn/Miller study of software engineering ethics in the June 2009 edition of IEEE Computer, and my letter to the editors which I published…
- An Ethical Statement on Incidents by: Peter Ladkin
  June 27, 2009, 09:49
  Donald Gotterbarn and Keith W. Miller wrote on a Software Engineering Code of Ethics in the June 2009 edition of IEEE Computer magazine. They illustrate the…
- AF 447 ACARS: A Mistake with a Life of its Own by: Peter Ladkin
  June 14, 2009, 01:27
  Here is yet another indication of how things can get a life of their own:- Soon after the France 2 program showing the ACARS transcript messages on 4 June,…
- AF 447 ACARS Messages: Reading Tea Leaves by: Peter Ladkin
  June 11, 2009, 08:20
  A list of the 24 ACARS messages listed by Air France that were sent from AF 447 between 0210Z and 0214Z on 1 June, 2009, the last information received from the…
- The Crash of Air France flight 447 on 1 June 2009: introduction by: Peter Ladkin
  June 10, 2009, 07:10
  On the morning of June 1, 2009, Air France Flight 447 from Rio de Janeiro in Brazil to Paris failed to make any contact with Air Traffic Control after about…
- The crash of GOL 1907 by: Peter Ladkin
  October 5, 2006, 09:35
  Sometime round about 16:00 local time on Friday 29 September, an Embraer Legacy jet on a delivery flight on airway UZ 6 in the Mato Grosso of Brasil collided…
Category: Aviation (22)
- Software Quality and Fitness for Purpose by: Peter Ladkin
  August 26, 2011, 13:11
  Following on to my recent post on certification requirements for commercial aircraft, John Rushby and I have been discussed a paper of his, on commercial…
- Coda, Interdisciplinary Work, and Scientific Publishing by: Peter Ladkin
  August 15, 2011, 10:29
  It sounds like a mish-mash, doesn't it? will probably read like a mish-mash, too. Because true interdisciplinary work always looks that way, I think. That…
- Certification Requirements for Commercial Airplanes by: Peter Ladkin
  August 14, 2011, 13:56
  I was browsing the invited lectures given under Martin Abadi's College de France lecture series and came across this elegant, simple explanation of so-called…
- Concorde, Ten Years On, Part 2 by: Peter Ladkin
  December 9, 2010, 21:55
  The Concorde accident to F-BTSC on 25 July 2000 is about as well understood as to causes as any accident can be. There is also, unusually, a more or less…
- Concorde, Ten Years On by: Peter Ladkin
  December 6, 2010, 12:00
  I understand that Simon Foreman observed at a meeting of the RAeS Law Group on 28 April this year on the criminalisation of aviation accidents, reported here…
- Simulators and Veridicality in Airline Training and Pilot Currency Checks by: Peter Ladkin
  September 9, 2010, 07:47
  In his note in RISKS-26.15, Peter Wayner refers to the article Simulator training flaws tied to airline crashes in USA Today, 31 August 2010 (WWW version),…
- Fully-Automatic Execution of Critical Manoeuvres in Airline Flying by: Peter Ladkin
  September 3, 2010, 08:23
  David Learmount's semi-annual review of commercial air accidents has just appeared in Flight International (3-9 August, p34). There were three accidents to…
- Malware and the August 2008 Madrid Spanair Take-Off Accident by: Peter Ladkin
  August 27, 2010, 08:38
  On 20 August 2008, a MD-82 aircraft of the airline Spanair crashed on takeoff (TO) from Madrid-Barajas airport. The high-lift devices on the wing had not been…
- Understanding Aerodynamics of Stalls by: Peter Ladkin
  July 28, 2010, 12:19
  Recently, most commercial transport airplane manufacturers have been revisiting their FCOM procedures for “stall recovery” (actually, procedures avoiding…
- Risk Assessment of Volcanic Ash to Commercial Aviation by: Peter Ladkin
  May 28, 2010, 15:17
  Paul Marks of the New Scientist has a couple of good recent articles on the volcanic-ash problem for commercial aviation, one from today and one from last…
- The Political Economy of Volcanic Ash by: Peter Ladkin
  April 28, 2010, 08:42
  The Economist has of course a Briefing on the Effects of the Ash Cloud from Eyjafjallajökull on the political economy of flight, which informs its lead…
- Flying in Volcanic Ash, Part 2 by: Peter Ladkin
  April 22, 2010, 06:57
  The ash cloud over Europe seems to have abated somewhat, and commercial air traffic is returning to the air. The German DLR organisation (equivalent to the US…
- Flying in Volcanic Ash by: Peter Ladkin
  April 20, 2010, 07:02
  The biggest political problem of the week seems to be that airlines have stopped flying in Europe, because of the ash cloud from the volcano Eyjafjallajökull.…
- Thoughts on Engineering Communication (with a bit on Ice Particle Icing and AF447) by: Peter Ladkin
  August 21, 2009, 00:25
  I have been thinking recently about professional engineering communication. I was reminded once again of the lack of consensus by Nancy Leveson's comment…
- AF447: Issues Clarified by the BEA Report by: Peter Ladkin
  August 4, 2009, 20:38
  There are some significant issues which are clarified by the BEA's preliminary factual report, issued at the beginning of July: specifically the uncertainties…
- Avoiding Disaster on Takeoff by: Peter Ladkin
  July 24, 2009, 04:17
  It happened again! On 13 December 2008, a Boeing 767-39H suffered a tailstrike on takeoff at Manchester Airport. A tailstrike can occur on takeoff when the…
- Software Engineering Ethics - The Sequel by: Peter Ladkin
  July 22, 2009, 05:23
  Further to the Gotterbarn/Miller study of software engineering ethics in the June 2009 edition of IEEE Computer, and my letter to the editors which I published…
- An Ethical Statement on Incidents by: Peter Ladkin
  June 27, 2009, 09:49
  Donald Gotterbarn and Keith W. Miller wrote on a Software Engineering Code of Ethics in the June 2009 edition of IEEE Computer magazine. They illustrate the…
- AF 447 ACARS: A Mistake with a Life of its Own by: Peter Ladkin
  June 14, 2009, 01:27
  Here is yet another indication of how things can get a life of their own:- Soon after the France 2 program showing the ACARS transcript messages on 4 June,…
- AF 447 ACARS Messages: Reading Tea Leaves by: Peter Ladkin
  June 11, 2009, 08:20
  A list of the 24 ACARS messages listed by Air France that were sent from AF 447 between 0210Z and 0214Z on 1 June, 2009, the last information received from the…
- The Crash of Air France flight 447 on 1 June 2009: introduction by: Peter Ladkin
  June 10, 2009, 07:10
  On the morning of June 1, 2009, Air France Flight 447 from Rio de Janeiro in Brazil to Paris failed to make any contact with Air Traffic Control after about…
- The crash of GOL 1907 by: Peter Ladkin
  October 5, 2006, 09:35
  Sometime round about 16:00 local time on Friday 29 September, an Embraer Legacy jet on a delivery flight on airway UZ 6 in the Mato Grosso of Brasil collided…
Category: Systems Safety Engineering (27)
- The Accident to Qantas Flight 72, VH-QPA, in October 2008 by: Peter Ladkin
  December 21, 2011, 11:32
  The Airbus A330-303 VH-QPA experienced uncommanded nose-down pitch commands while in cruise at FL370. Lots of unsecured people were thrown to the ceiling,…
- Dealing With Nuclear Waste by: Peter Ladkin
  December 2, 2011, 10:34
  The Independent reports today on a written statement by UK Energy Minister Hendry to Parliament on what the Government is deciding to do with its radioactive…
- Assurance of Cyber-Physical Systems by: Peter Ladkin
  November 17, 2011, 19:16
  I attended Seminar 11441 on Science and Engineering of Cyber-Physical Systems at the Leibniz Centre for Informatics at Schloss Dagstuhl in the Saarland on 1-4…
- The Definition of Risk - Yet Again by: Peter Ladkin
  November 16, 2011, 09:46
  In a message to the York Safety-Critical Systems Mailing List, Tracy White recounted a discussion with someone from the field of “Risk Management” who was…
- Ensuring Safety Requirements Fulfilment in Possibly-Imperfect Software by: Peter Ladkin
  October 16, 2011, 10:16
  Ludi Benner just asked me privately about the feasibility of dumping stack traces from operating SW in flight. I concluded that it is not a very practical idea…
- Software Quality and Fitness for Purpose by: Peter Ladkin
  August 26, 2011, 13:11
  Following on to my recent post on certification requirements for commercial aircraft, John Rushby and I have been discussed a paper of his, on commercial…
- Certification Requirements for Commercial Airplanes by: Peter Ladkin
  August 14, 2011, 13:56
  I was browsing the invited lectures given under Martin Abadi's College de France lecture series and came across this elegant, simple explanation of so-called…
- Chinese Train Collision by: Peter Ladkin
  July 26, 2011, 08:17
  On Saturday July 23, a high-speed train lost power and either slowed down or stalled, and a second one rear-ended it, in or near Wenzhou city, on a line in…
- A Fukushima Diary by: Peter Ladkin
  July 19, 2011, 12:00
  In preparation for my talk at the 11th Bieleschweig Workshop, on the Fukushima accident and systems prone to extreme usafe events, I have prepared a synopsis…
- Standardising Causal Analysis by: Peter Ladkin
  June 30, 2011, 12:48
  As a member of the German national committee for standards concerning the functional safety of electrical/electronic/programmable-electronic systems (known in…
- Probabilistic and Possibilistic Analysis, the Precautionary Principle and EUEs by: Peter Ladkin
  May 13, 2011, 07:08
  Yesterday, Werner U brought our attention, on a closed mailing list of which I have been a member for almost two decades, to a study by John Mueller, a…
- 11th Bieleschweig Workshop: The Fukushima Accident and Systems Prone to EUE by: Peter Ladkin
  April 22, 2011, 10:23
  Readers might like to know about the 11th Bieleschweig Workshop on System Engineering, which will take place in Bielefeld in the Senate Room of the University…
- The Epidemiology of Memes and its Effect upon Safety by: Peter Ladkin
  April 14, 2011, 09:13
  Richard Dawkins has the notion of memes. They are, crudely speaking, thoughts or ideas or ways of thinking or cultural traits, that spread through society. The…
- Fukushima Dai-ichi Accident: Sociologist Needed! by: Peter Ladkin
  March 31, 2011, 10:31
  I have been working this year with sociologists, in a research group composed largely of visitors to Bielefeld's residential research institute ZiF. The group…
- Fukushima, the Tsunami Hazard, and Engineering Practice by: Peter Ladkin
  March 27, 2011, 11:43
  The conclusion first, as well as at the end. For safety-critical infrastructure, there should be required a continuously-maintained, public safety case.…
- On A Misleading Trope in System Safety Engineering by: Peter Ladkin
  November 18, 2010, 13:53
  Actually, the trope is the second of four topics I wish to address I recently exchanged opinions with Michael Jackson on the use of mathematics and logic in…
- Formal Definition of the Notion of Safety Requirement by: Peter Ladkin
  November 9, 2010, 06:20
  This essay concerns the theory of safety requirements, how they may be defined. I am not concerned here with practical methods of determining them. The…
- The Parable of the Exploding Apples by: Peter Ladkin
  November 9, 2010, 03:21
  I thought up the following parable in order to show the value of particular sorts of formal completeness during hazard analysis (Hazan). Contemporary Hazan…
- Progress in Hazard Analysis by: Peter Ladkin
  October 22, 2010, 05:21
  Hazard analysis (Hazan) is one of the necessary skills of a safety-critical systems engineer. In a post to the University of York Safety-Critical mailing list…
- Passenger Lives Saved by Rail ATP versus Installation Risk to Employees by: Peter Ladkin
  February 20, 2010, 19:32
  Prof. John McDermid of the University of York asked me if I had documentation for the suggestion in my post on the Buizingen collision that the number of…
- Monday’s Train Collision between Buizingen and Halle, near Brussels, Belgium by: Peter Ladkin
  February 16, 2010, 18:50
  At 08.30 am MET (07.30 am UTC) on Monday, 15 February 2010, a commuter train and an intercity train collided in Buizingen, in the greater Brussels region.…
- Thoughts on the Luge Crash in Vancouver by: Peter Ladkin
  February 13, 2010, 19:11
  There are areas of technological safety which are almost all about people and behavior, for example road safety. Roads form a very open system; there are…
- The SIL of the Valve on the Shelf by: Jan Sanders
  December 21, 2009, 02:11
  -
- A Watershed in System Safety Engineering? by: Peter Ladkin
  November 8, 2009, 01:28
  The report on the RAF Nimrod accident in 2006 has recently come out and at least British safety engineers regard it as a major event. This is a milestone, and…
- Some Figures from Industry on Use and Training of Formal Methods by: Peter Ladkin
  September 22, 2009, 22:46
  On 18 August I wrote an essay on eight themes in System Safety Engineering which addressed the use (or not) of so-called formal methods. On 28 August, Rod…
- Eight Themes in System Safety Engineering by: Peter Ladkin
  August 16, 2009, 23:44
  I was led recently to think of some of the main issues in safety engineering of systems with computer-based components, when they occurred in the course of a…
- Formal Methods in Modern Critical-Software Development by: Peter Ladkin
  June 22, 2009, 04:58
  with Martyn Thomas, co-author. There has long been a view held by prominent computer scientists, such as Turing-Award winner Professor Sir Tony Hoare,…

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