Developing Safe and Dependable Sensornets

Sensornets are being widely proposed as a solution technology in a wide number of applications, e.g. health care. In this paper we explore how a dependability case might be argued, concentrating on safety but recognising other important properties, and the supporting evidence gathered. As part of the work some key challenges for the safety and sensornet communities are established in part by developing parts of a safety case for a fire detection system in a skyscraper. Finally we demonstrate how some of these issues can be resolved by modifying earlier work on Run Time Assurance of applications to satisfy some key safety and dependability requirements in the context of a sensornet used as part of a fire fighting system.