Professor Peter A. Lindsay

Emeritus Professor of Systems Engineering
School of Information Technology & Electrical Engineering
The University of Queensland

Personal details:

Previous Position:

Boeing Chair in Systems Engineering in the School of ITEE
Director, ARC Centre for Complex Systems

Fellow, Australian Computer Society
Editorial Board Member, Science of Computer Programming

Editorial Board Member, Air Traffic Control Quarterly

Contact details:

Telephone: +61 7 3365 1009 (ITEE enquiries)
Email: p.lindsay "at" uq.edu.au

Research interests:

Engineering of complex systems; trusted computer system development & assurance; air traffic management; Safety Critical Systems; Formal Methods; Hazard and Risk Analysis; mathematical foundations of systems and software engineering; configuration & change management.

Short bio:

Peter Lindsay joined the University of Queensland in 1991 after holding academic and research positions at the University of New South Wales, the University of Manchester in the UK and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the USA. He has over 30 years’ experience in formal aspects of systems and software engineering. He is co-author of two books on formal specification and verification of software systems, and over 60 refereed papers in the area.

From 1991-2001 he was Assistant Director of the Software Verification Research Centre (SVRC) and provided system safety expertise to government and industry on a large number of safety-critical applications in the areas of defence, aerospace and transport. In 2001 he was appointed inaugural Boeing Professor of Systems Engineering at UQ and created the Systems Engineering field of study in the Master of Engineering program at UQ.  In 2003 he was appointed founding Director of the ARC Centre for Complex Systems (ACCS), an inter-disciplinary research centre exploring emergent behaviour and distributed control in network-based systems. Peter retired from UQ in July 2016 and was made Emeritus Professor.

In 1996, with Nigel Morlet, he was awarded the Cutler’s Prize for advances in surgical instrumentation by the Royal College of Surgeons of England for a device they invented for measuring astigmatism during surgery.

Some projects at UQ:

• Technical Program Chair, SETE/APCOSE 2012 - the Systems Engineering, Test & Evaluation Conference of SESA, ITEA & INCOSE Region VI
• Co-leader of the Dependable Complex Computer-Based Systems research program, developing analysis methods & tools for the Behaviour Tree modelling notation
  • some outcomes and case studies are reported here

·     Chair, Queensland IEEE Aerospace and Electronics Systems Society Chapter 2010-2011

• Conference Chair, 8^th Asia-Pacific Complex Systems Conference, Gold Coast 2-5 July 2007
• Program Chair, Australian Systems Engineering, Test & Evaluation Conference (SETE) 2005 & 2012
• Leader of the ACCS’s air traffic management research program
• The SafeHCI project, a collaboration with the Key Centre for Human Factors and Applied Cognitive Psychology, to develop methods for safety analysis of human-computer interaction
• The DefSafe project, a 3-year project to help the Australian government's Defence Materiel Organisation (DMO) to formulate a consistent, co-ordinated and managed approach to the procurement of safety-critical systems
• NULKA missile-decoy safety-case evaluation
• The CARE method and toolset, a collaboration with Telectronics Pacing Systems for developing software for implantable heart defibrillators
• Program co-Chair, Formal Methods Europe 2002
• Inaugural General Chair, 1^st IEEE International Conference on Software Engineering & Formal Methods (SEFM’03)
• Member, Australian Safety Critical Systems Association (aSCSa), 1995-2003 (chair 1999-2000)

Some talks:

• Safety Assurance for Operating Procedures – a formal methods approach: Keynote talk at the 2014 Australian System Safety Conference.
• Talk on two areas of application for complex-systems models of non-linear systems (genetic regulation of cell growth in biological organisms, and patient flow through a hospital Emergency Dept), given to the Centre for Complex Systems Analysis at the University of York, UK on 28 Nov 2008.
• Interview with Robyn Williams on the future of air traffic management for The Science Show in July 2007. podcast (25Mb)
• Distributed Control in Network-based Systems: a complex systems approach, at Formal Methods 2006, Canada, August 2006.
• Safety Assurance of COTS Software, at Software Engineering Australia (SEA 2000), Canberra, April 2000.
• Verification & Validation of Safety-Critical Software, at Software Engineering Australia (SEA'99), Canberra, April 1999.
• A Tutorial Introduction to Formal Methods, 3rd Australian Workshop on Safety Critical Systems and Software (SCS'98), Adelaide, November 1998.

Some papers:

Model-based Systems Engineering / Safety Critical Systems:

·      P.A. Lindsay, S. Kromodimoeljo,  P.A. Strooper & M. Almorsy, Automation of Test Case Generation from Behavior Tree Requirements Models, Proc 24th Australasian Software Engineering Conference (ASWEC), IEEE Comp Soc 2015

·         S. Kromodimoeljo & P.A. Lindsay, Automatic Generation of Minimal Cut Sets, Proc 4th International Workshop on Engineering Safety and Security Systems (ESSS), Electronic Proceedings in Theoretical Computer Science 184, 2015, pp. 33-47

·         Safety Assurance for Operating Procedures: a formal methods approach, in Proc 2014 Australian System Safety Conference, CRPIT vol 156, to appear.

·         S-K. Kim, T. Myers, M-F. Wendland &.A. Lindsay, Execution of natural language requirements using State Machines synthesised from Behavior Trees, Journal of Systems and Software 85 (2012) 2652-2664.

·         P.A. Lindsay, N. Yatapanage & K. Winter. Cut Set Analysis using Behavior Trees and model checking. Formal Aspects of Computing 24:2, 249-266, 2012

·         P.A. Lindsay, K.Winter & S. Kromodimoeljo, Model-based Safety Risk Assessment using Behaviour Trees, in Proc Asia Pacific Conference on Systems Engineering (APCOSE)/Australian Systems Engineering, Test & Evaluation (SETE) 2012 combined conference, Brisbane, 1-2 May 2012, Systems Engineering Society of Australia ISBN 978-0-9752028-6-9

·          L. Grunske, K. Winter, N. Yatapanage, S. Zafar & P. Lindsay. Experience with fault injection experiments for FMEA, J. of Software: Practice & Experience, 41(11) 1233-1258, 2011.

·         Behavior Trees: from Systems Engineering to Software Engineering, in Proc 8^th IEEE Int Conf on Software Engineering and Formal Methods (SEFM), Pisa, Italy Sept 2010, pp 21-30.

·         P.A. Lindsay, K.Winter & N.Yatapange, Safety assessment using Behavior Trees and Model Checking, in Proc 8th IEEE Int Conf on Software Engineering and Formal Methods (SEFM), Pisa, Italy Sept 2010, pp 181-190.

·         L. Grunske, P. Lindsay, E. Bondarev, Y. Papadopoulos, & D. Parker. An outline of an architecture-based method for optimizing dependability attributes of software-intensive systems, R. de Lemos et al. (Eds.): Architecting Dependable Systems IV, LNCS 4615, Springer Verlag 2007, pp. 188–209

·         L Grunske, P Lindsay, N Yatapanage, K Winter. An automated failure mode & effects analysis based on high-level design specification with Behavior Trees, in Proc Integrated Formal Methods (IFM’05), LNCS 3771, Springer 2005, 129-149.

·         (with A.Rae) A behaviour-based method for fault tree generation, in Proc 22nd Int System Safety Conf, Providence RI, 2004, 289-298

·         (with C.Hamoy & D.Hemer) HazLog: tool support for hazard management,
in Proc 9th Australian Workshop on Safety Critical Systems and Software, 2004

·         (with J.McDermid) Derivation of safety requirements for an embedded control system,
in Proc. Systems Engineering, Test and Evaluation Conference (SETE 2002), Systems Engineering Society of Australia, 2002, 83-93.

·         M. Bofinger, N. Robinson, P. Lindsay, M. Spiers, M. Ashford and A. Pitman. Experience with Extending CMMI for Safety Related Applications, Proc 12^th Ann Int Symp of the Int Council On Systems Eng (INCOSE 2002), Las Vegas 2002.

·         Improved acquisition processes for safety-critical systems in the Australian Department of Defence,
Proc 6th Australian Workshop on Safety Critical Systems and Software, CRPIT vol.3, Aust Comp Soc, 2001, 31-38.

·         (with G.Smith) Safety assurance of Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) software,
in Proc 5th Australian Workshop on Safety Critical Systems and Software.
See also SVRC Technical Report 00-17

·         (with J.McDermid & D.Tombs) Deriving quantified safety requirements in complex systems,
in Computer Safety, Reliability and Security (SAFECOMP 2000), LNCS 1943, Springer 2000, 117-130.
See also SVRC Technical Report 99-46

·         (with B.Atchison & T.Cant) Improving safety management in defence acquisition,
Proc 4th Australian Workshop on Safety Critical Systems and Software.
See also SVRC Technical Report 99-42.

·         (with B.Atchison) Safety validation of embedded control software using Z animation,
in Proc 5th IEEE Int Symp on High Assurance Systems Engineering (HASE'00).

·         (with B.Atchison & D.Tombs) A case study in software safety assurance using formal methods,
SVRC Technical Report 99-31.

·         (with J.McDermid) A systematic approach to software safety integrity levels,
Proc 16th Int Conf on Computer Safety, Reliability and Security (SAFECOMP'97), Springer Verlag 1997, 70-82.
See also SVRC Technical Report 97-04

Complex Systems / Air Traffic Management:

·         S. Arnott & P.A. Lindsay, Case study analysis of Defense Experimentation to support Network Enabled Capability development, Journal of Defense Modeling and Simulation, Jan 2012.

·         S. Arnott & P.A. Lindsay, Reducing uncertainty in Systems Engineering through Defence Experimentation, Proc Improving Systems and Software Engineering Conference (ISSEC), Brisbane, Australia, Aug 2010, 13-24 – best paper award

·         P.Valencia, R.Jurdak & P.Lindsay. Fitness importance for online evolution, Proc 12th Ann Conf on Genetic and Evolutionary Computation (GECCO), July 2010, ACM, 2117-2118

·       P. Valencia, P.A. Lindsay & R. Jurdak, Distributed genetic evolution in wireless sensor networks, Proc 9th ACM/IEEE Int Conf on Information Processing in Sensor Networks (ISPN), Stockholm Sweden, April 2010, ACM, 13-23

·         A. MacDiarmid & P.A. Lindsay, Can System of Systems be given self-x requirement engineering capabilities? Proc. Systems Engineering, Test & Evaluation Conference (SETE 2010), Adelaide 3-6 May 2010 – best student paper award

·         K.-Y. Chen & P.A. Lindsay, Feedback of delayed rewards in XCS for environments with aliasing states, Proc 4th Australian Conference on Artificial Life, Lecture Notes in AI, Springer.

·         (with C.Ramsay & Boeing RTE Madrid) Robustness of idle-throttle continuous descent approach trajectories against modified timing requirements, Proc 9th AIAA Aviation Technology, Integration, and Operations Conference (ATIO’09), Sept 2009.

·         K.-Y. Chen, P.A. Lindsay, P.J. Robinson & H.A. Abbass, A hierarchical conflict resolution method for multi-agent path planning, Proc 2009 IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC '09), 18-21 May 2009, 1169-1176.

·         J. Zhao, Z. Yang Dong, P. Lindsay & K.P. Wong, Flexible transmission expansion planning with uncertainties in an electricity market, IEEE Transactions on Power Systems 24 (1) 2009, 479 – 488.

·         S. Connelly, P. Lindsay & M. Gallagher. An agent based approach to examining shared situation awareness, Proc 12th Int Conf on Engineering of Complex Computer Systems, IEEE CS Press, July 2007, 138-147.

·         KY Chen, H. Dam, P. Lindsay & H. Abbass. Biasing XCS with domain knowledge for planning flight trajectories in a moving sector free flight environment, Proc 2007 IEEE Symposium on Artificial Life, Hawaii, USA, April 2007, 456-462.

·         A. Neal, M. Mooij, S. Bolland, T. Xiao, P. Lindsay & C. Boag-Hodgson. Using multi-level analysis to model the sources of variability in workload within and between sectors, Proc 14^th Internat Symposium on Aviation Psychology (ISAP 2007), Dayton OH, USA, April 2007, Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, 463-468.

·         S. Bolland, A. Neal, S. Fothergill, M. Humphreys & P. Lindsay. Modeling the human operator, part II: emulating controller intervention, Proc 14^th Internat Symposium on Aviation Psychology (ISAP 2007), Dayton OH, USA, April 2007, Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, 57-62.

·         Evaluation of a simple timing-based intervention heuristic for trajectory-based Air Traffic Management, Proceedings 5th EUROCONTROL Innovative Research Workshop, Brétigny-sur-Orge, France, 2006

·         (with A. Kay et al) An exploration into the uses of agent-based modelling to improve quality of health care, Proc Int Conf on Complex Systems (ICCS2006), Boston 2006.

·         R Chang, P Lindsay, A simulator for exploring autonomous control of multiple UAVs at non-radar controlled airstrips, in Proc 2nd International Conference on Intelligent Sensors, Sensor Networks and Information Processing (ISSNIP 2005), 391-396.

·         J. Wicks et al, Simulation of Air Traffic Controllers’ behaviour using the Operator Choice Model, in: Proc International Congress on Modelling and Simulation (MODSIM’05), 3023-3029, 2005.

·         J. Watson, H. Abbass, C. Lokan, P. Lindsay. Software engineering for artificial life, complex systems, and agent-based distillation, Proceedings of the 7th Asia-Pacific Complex Systems Conference, 2004, 649-661

Human-Computer Interaction:

·         A.Cerone, S.Connelly and P.Lindsay, Formal analysis of human operator behavioural patterns in interactive surveillance systems, J. Software & Systems Modeling 7#3 (2008) 273-286.

·         (with A.Cerone & S.Connelly) Formal analysis of human-computer interaction using model-checking, Proc 3^rd IEEE International Conference on Software Engineering and Formal Methods,
Koblenz, Germany, 5-9 September 2005, IEEE Comp Soc, 2005, 352-361.

·         (with SafeHCI colleagues) Development of hazard analysis techniques for human-computer systems, in: Innovation and Consolidation in Aviation, G. Edkins & P. Pfister (Eds.), Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2003, 255-262.

·         (with S.Connelly) Modelling erroneous operator behaviours for an air-traffic control task,
Proc 3rd Australasian User Interface Conference (AUIC2002), CRPIT vol.7, Aust Comp Soc, 2002, 43-54.

·         (with SafeHCI colleagues) A formal model of cognitive processes for an Air Traffic Control task, SVRC Technical Report 01-31

·         (with SafeHCI colleagues) Towards model-based prediction of human error rates in interactive systems,
in Proc Australasian User Interface Conference (AUIC2001), IEEE Press, 2001, 42-29.
See also SVRC Technical Report 00-33

·         A formal approach to specification and verification of task management in interactive systems,
in: IEE Proc of Software Eng 144(4):206-214, August 1997.
See also SVRC Technical Report 97-23

·         A formal basis for modelling process and task management aspects of user interface design, in: Proc. BCS FACS Workshop Formal Aspects of The Human Computer Interface, Sheffield, UK, September 1996 (Springer-Verlag).
See also SVRC Technical Report 96-7

Formal Verification & Validation:

·         (with B.Atchison) Safety validation of embedded control software using Z animation,
in Proc 5th IEEE Int Symp on High Assurance Systems Engineering (HASE'00).
See also SVRC Technical Report 99-31

·         Specification and validation of a network security policy model,
in: Proof in VDM: Case Studies (J.C. Bicarregui, editor), Springer Verlag FACIT series, 1998 (ISBN 3-540-76186-1), 65-93.
See also: SVRC Technical Report 97-05

·         A formal approach to specification and verification of task management in interactive systems,
IEE Proceedings of Software Eng 4 (1997) 206--214.
See also SVRC Technical Report 97-23

·         (with colleagues from CSC Australia and the SVRC) Formal Methods Pilot Project, in: Proceedings Asia-Pacific Software Engineering Conference APSEC'96, Seoul, Dec'96.
A second report appears in the Industry Experience Track Proceedings, 9th Australian Software Engineering Conference (ASWEC'96), Melbourne, July 1996.
See also SVRC Technical Report 96-17

·         A syntax for system specification that integrates VDM-SL and Z, SVRC Technical Report 95-11

·         On transferring VDM verification techniques to Z, in Proceedings of Formal Methods Europe (FME'94), Barcelona, October 1994. Also appears in: SVRC Technical Report 94-10

·         (with Erik van Keulen) Case studies in the verification of specifications in Z and VDM, SVRC Technical Report 94-03

Other Software & Systems Engineering:

·         (with D.Hemer) Template-based construction of verified software, IEE Proceedings Software 152#1 (2005) 2-12

·         (with C. Smith et al) An environment for building a system out of its requirements, Proceedings 19th International Conference on Automated Software Engineering, ASE 2004, 398-399  

·         (with H.Voelzer, A.MacDonald, B.Atchison, A.Hanlon & P.Strooper) SubCM: a tool for improved visibility of software change in an industrial setting,
IEEE Trans Sw Eng 30#10 (2004) 675-693

·         (with Foxvv project colleagues)  A tool for subsystem configuration management,
Proceedings of the International Conference on Software Maintenance (ICSM), Montreal, Canada, Oct 2002, pages 492-500, IEEE Computer Society.
See also SVRC Technical Report 02-07.

·         (with D.Hemer) Specification-based retrieval strategies for module reuse. In D. Grant and L. Sterling, editors, Proceedings 2001 Australian Software Engineering Conference, 27-28 August 2001, Canberra, Australia, IEEE Computer Society, 2001, 235-243. Best Paper Award
See also SVRC Technical Report 01-25.

·         (with L.Murray, A.Griffiths, P.Strooper) Requirements traceability for embedded software - an industry experience report, Proceedings 6th IASTED Sw Eng & Applics conference (SEA 2002), ed M.H. Hamza, ACTA Press, 2002, pp 63-69.
See also SVRC Technical Report 00-41.

·         (with J.McDonald, L.Murray, P.Strooper) A pilot project on module testing for embedded software,
in Proc 7th IEEE Int Conf on Engineering of Complex Computer Systems, Skovde, Sweden, 2001.
See also SVRC Technical Report 00-24.

·         (with O.Traynor) Supporting fine-grained traceability in software development environments, in Proc. 8th System Configuration Management Symposium, Springer Verlag LNCS 1439, 1998, 133-139.
An expanded version appears as: SVRC Technical Report 98-10

·         (with Y.Liu, O.Traynor) A generic model for fine-grained configuration management including version control and traceability, in Proc. Australian Software Engineering Conference (ASWEC'97), IEEE Computer Society Press 1997, 27--36.
See also SVRC Technical Report 97-45

·         (with O. Traynor) Version and configuration management of formal theories,
in Proc. Formal Methods Pacific (FMP'97), Springer Verlag 1997, 165--185.
See also SVRC Technical Report 97-13

·         (with Y.Liu, O.Traynor) Managing document conformance: a case study in fine-grained configuration management, in: Proc. 20th Aust. Computer Science Conference, Sydney, Feb'97; Aust Comp Sci Communications 19 (1997) 373--382
See also SVRC Technical Report 96-20

·         (with K.Ross) A precise examination of the behaviour of process models, in Proc. Formal Methods Europe (FME'94), Barcelona, October 1994.
Also appears in expanded form as: SVRC Technical Report 94-7

The CARE method and toolset:

·         (with D.Hemer) Supporting component-based reuse in CARE, Proc Aust Comp Sci Conf (ACSC2002), CRPIT vol.4, Aust Comp Soc 2002, 95-104.
See also SVRC Technical Report 01-26.

·         (with D.Hemer) Using CARE to construct verified software, in Proceedings 1st Int Conf on Formal Engineering Methods (ICFEM'97), IEEE Computer Society Press 1997, 122-131.
See also SVRC Technical Report 97-40.

·         (with D.Hemer) Reuse of verified design templates through extended pattern matching, in Proceedings Formal Methods Europe (FME'97), Springer Verlag 1997, 495-514.
See also SVRC Technical Report 97-03.

·         (with D.Hemer) A template-based approach to construction of verified software, SVRC Technical Report 96-23, August 1996.

·         (with David Hemer) An industrial-strength method for the construction of formally verified software, in: Proceedings of the 9th Australian Software Engineering Conference (ASWEC'96), Melbourne, July 1996, IEEE Computer Society Press.
See also SVRC Technical Report 96-13

·         (with David Hemer) The CARE toolset for developing verified programs from formal specifications, in: Proceedings of the 4th IEEE International Symposium on Assessment of Software Tools, Toronto, Canada, May 1996.
See also SVRC Technical Report 95-52

·         The Data Logger case study in CARE, SVRC Technical Report 95-10

·         The CARE method of verified software development, SVRC Technical Report 95-09

Books & Edited Proceedings:

·     Co-editor, Distributed, Parallel and Biologically Inspired Systems, IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology vol 329, Springer 2010.

• Editor, Proc Australian Systems Engineering, Test & Evaluation Conference (SETE), 2005.
• Co-editor (with Antonio Cerone) Proc 1^st IEEE International Conference on Software Engineering & Formal Methods (SEFM), IEEE Computer Soc, 2003

• Co-editor (with Tony Cant) Proc 8th Australian Workshop on Safety Critical Systems and Software,
  Conferences in Research and Practice in Information Technology volume 33, Australian Computer Society, 2003.
• Co-editor (with Lars-Henrik Eriksson) Formal Methods – Getting IT Right, Lecture Notes in Computer Science 2931, Springer Verlag, 2002
• Editor, Proceedings 7th Australian Workshop on Safety Critical Systems and Software, Conferences in Research and Practice in Information Technology volume 15, Australian Computer Society, 2002.
• Editor, Proceedings 6th Australian Workshop on Safety Critical Systems and Software, Conferences in Research and Practice in Information Technology volume 3, Australian Computer Society, 2001.
• Editor, Proceedings 3rd Australian Workshop on Safety Critical Systems and Software, Australian Computer Society, 1998 (ISBN no. 0-9099-2570-4).
• (with Juan Bicarregui, John Fitzgerald, Richard Moore and Brian Ritchie) Proof in VDM: A Practitioner's Guide, Springer-Verlag, FACIT Series, 1994.
• (with Cliff Jones, Kevin Jones and Richard Moore) mural: A Formal Development Support System, Springer-Verlag, 1991.

 

Click here to see our cat Katya.