ABSTRACT
The chapter provides the concept of Dependability Engineering as a relatively new, still dynamically developing field of knowledge. A historical outline of the development of this concept is presented, starting with the idea of failure tolerance functioning and fault-tolerant systems. Based on these ideas, the Dependable Computing concept has matured and has been successfully applied to the field of computer science and information and communication technology. The second part of the chapter presents the basics of Reliability Engineering and the five selected approaches for building the foundation of this novel, emerging applied science discipline. Each of these approaches have their advantages and disadvantages, so their use should depend on the application area and the specifics of a given type of system. The vulnerability-based concept as well as risk related concept seem to be the most universal and therefore, in the remainder of this work, an attempt will be made to develop a universal model of Cognitive Dependability Engineering for cyber-physical-social systems on their assumptions.
