Norbert Oster - Böcker

Since 1979, when it was ?rst established by the Technical Committee on Re- ability, Safety and Security of the European Workshop on Industrial Computer Systems (EWICS TC7), the SAFECOMP Conference series has regularly and continuously contributed to improving the state of the art of highly depe- able computer-based systems, since then increasingly applied to safety-relevant industrial domains. Inthisexpandingtechnical?eldSAFECOMPo?ersaplatformforknowledge andtechnologytransferbetweenacademia,industry,researchandlicensingins- tutions, providing ample opportunities for exchanging insights, experiences and trends in the areas of safety, reliability and security regarding critical computer applications. In accordance with the growing spread of critical infrastructures involving both safety and security threats, this year’s SAFECOMP program included a considerable number of contributions addressing technical problems and engineering solutions across the border between safety-related and securi- related concerns. Thereactiontoourcallforpaperswasparticularlygratifyingandimpressive, including 136 full papers submitted by authors representing 29 countries from Europe,Asia, North and South America aswell asAustralia. The selection of 33 fullpapersand16shortpapersforpresentationandpublicationwasachallenging task requiring a huge amount of reviewing and organizational e?ort. In view of the particularly high number of articles submitted, obvious practical constraints led – to our regret – to the rejection of a considerable amount of high-quality work. To all authors, invited speakers, members of the International Program Committee and external reviewers go our heartfelt thanks! The local organization of SAFECOMP 2007, hosted in Nuremberg, is also gratefullyacknowledged.