The ABZ 2014 conference is organized in Toulouse

The ABZ conference is dedicated to the cross-fertilization of six related state-based and machine-based formal methods, Abstract State Machines (ASM), Alloy, B, TLA, VDM and Z, that share a common conceptual foundation and are widely used in both academia and industry for the design and analysis of hardware and software systems. It builds on the success of the first ABZ conference held in London in 2008, where the ASM, B and Z conference series merged into a single event, the success of the second ABZ 2010 conference held in Orford (Canada) where the Alloy community joined the event and the success of ABZ 2012 held in Pisa (Italy) which saw the inclusion of the VDM community. The novelty of the 4th international event is the inclusion of the TLA community in the ABZ conference series.

Contributions are solicited on all aspects of the theory and applications of ASMs, Alloy, B, TLA, VDM, Z approaches in software/hardware engineering, including the development of tools and industrial applications. The program spans from theoretical and methodological foundations to practical applications, emphasizing system engineering methods and tools that are distinguished by mathematical rigor and have proved to be industrially viable. The main goal of the conference is to contribute to the integration of accurate state- and machine-based system development methods, clarifying their commonalities and differences to better understand how to combine different approaches for accomplishing the various tasks in modeling, experimental validation, mathematical verification of reliable high-quality hardware/software systems.

Although organized to host several formal methods with ASM, Alloy, B, TLA, VDM and Z, in a single event, editorial control of the joint conference is vested in one integrated program committee, which will respectively determine its ASM, Alloy, B, TLA, VDM and Z content, to be presented in parallel conference tracks with a schedule to allow the participants to switch between the sessions.

The 4th edition of ABZ sees the introduction of a new session dedicated to a shared real-life case study among all the methods addressed in ABZ 2014. The objective of this session is to enrich the set of case studies developed with ABZ methods with a practical and real-life case study. The aeronautical context of Toulouse led the organizers to define a real-life case study issued from this domain.

Proposals are invited for workshops and tutorials to take place the day before the main conference.

Three kinds of contributions are invited:

• Research papers: full papers of not more than 14 pages in LNCS format, which have to be original, unpublished and not submitted elsewhere.
• Short presentations of work in progress, and tool demonstrations. This is an excellent opportunity for Ph.D. students to present and validate their work in progress. An extended abstract of not more than 4 pages is expected and will be reviewed.
• Answers to case study papers: full papers of not more than 14 pages in LNCS format reporting on the experiments conducted with any of the state based techniques in the scope of ABZ 2014.
• Application in industry papers reporting on work or experiences on the application of state based formal methods in industry. An extended abstract of not more than 4 pages is expected and will be reviewed. It is also an interesting option for industrial practitioners who sometimes face too many constraints to prepare a full paper.

Contributions should be submitted electronically in PDF at the ABZ 2014 conference Easy-Chair web site. The papers must be prepared using the SPRINGER LNCS style. The answers to case study should be submitted electronically in PDF at the Case study Easy-Chair web site.

All research and short accepted papers will be published in a volume of Springer's LNCS series. The answers to case study papers and the application in industry papers will be published in a volume of Springer's CCIS series. The two volumes will be distributed at the conference.

Journal Special Issues: an improved version of a selected number of contributions will be published in a special issue of the journal Science of Computer Programming for the research papers and in a special issue of the Software Tools and Technology Transfer journal for the answers to case study papers

Case study session chairs
- Frédéric BONIOL, ONERA-DTIM, Toulouse, France (frederic.boniol@onera.fr)
- Virginie Wiels, ONERA-DTIM, Toulouse, France (Virginie.Wiels@onera.fr)
The deadline for submissions is January 14February 3, 2014. Notifications will be sent by March 1, 2014.

Workshop Proposals. Workshops are slected. Please see Workshop web page.
Workshops and tutorials will be associated to the main event ABZ. Proposals are solicited in areas related to the conference topics. Workshop proposal should be sent to the workshop chairs:
- Lugia Petre, University of Turku, Turku, Finland (Lugia.Petre@abo.fi)
- Patrizia Scandurra, University of Bergamo, Italy (patrizia.scandurra@unibg.it)
- Alexander Romanovski, University of Newcastle, Newcastle, United Kingdom (alexander.romanovsky@newcastle.ac.uk)
The deadline for submissions is October 15, 2013. Notifications will be sent by November 30, 2013

Tutorial Proposals
Tutorial proposal should be sent to the tutorial chairs
- Stefan Hallerstede, University of Aarhus, Aarhus, Denmark (sha@iha.dk)
- Roozbeh Farahbod, SAP research, Karlshrue, Germany (roozbeh.farahbod@sap.com)
The deadline for submissions is January 30, 2014. Notifications will be sent by February 28, 2014

Invited Speakers
To be announced.

Important dates

Conference Chairs
- Yamine AIT AMEUR, INPT-ENSEEIHT and IRIT, Toulouse,France
- Klaus-Dieter SCHEWE, University of Linz and SCCH, Linz, Austria

Program Committee
To be announced.

For questions concerning ABZ 2014, contact Yamine AIT AMEUR (yamine@n7.fr) or Klaus-Dieter SCHEWE (Klaus-Dieter.schewe@scch.at).