Formal methods in industrial critical systems

Formal methods are well-established and extensively used to ensure the correctness of core hardware and software components in safety-critical systems across industries such as railways, avionics, nuclear plants, and automotive. Their ability to provide mathematically rigorous guarantees makes them invaluable for verifying critical properties like safety, reliability, and security. However, the increasing complexity of modern systems requires enhanced support for applying these techniques effectively in industrial context. Addressing these challenges demands that formal methods evolve to become more scalable, interoperable with industrial development workflows, and better supported by automation and user-friendly tools for developers and engineers. These advancements are essential to enable the broader and more systematic adoption of formal methods in the engineering of complex, real-world systems. In this introduction to the special issue, we highlight several recent advances in the application of formal methods for specifying and verifying safety-critical systems in various industrial domains. These advances are showcased through four thoroughly revised and extended papers originally presented at the 28th International Conference on Formal Methods for Industrial Critical Systems (FMICS 2023).