Organizations and individuals are becoming increasingly dependent on sophisticated computing systems. In differing circumstances, this dependency might for example center on the continuity of the service delivered by the computing system, the overall performance level achieved, the real-time response rate provided, the extent to which catastrophic failures are avoided, or confidentiality violations prevented. These various concerns can be subsumed into the single conceptual framework of dependability, for which reliability, availability, safety and security, for example, can be considered as particular attributes.

The fourth European Dependable Computing Conference aims to provide a European venue for researchers and practitioners from all over the world to present and discuss their latest research results and developments.
Papers address the topics of the Conference on theory, techniques and tools for the design, validation, operation and evaluation of dependable computing systems.
Major topics include, but are not limited to:

Especially welcome are contributions dealing with dependability in new or evolving applications like multimedia systems, electronic commerce, mobile computing or embedded control systems.

EDCC is the successor of two European conference series on fault tolerance and dependability as well as on aspects of testing and diagnosis. One of them, known as the "International Conference on Fault-Tolerant Computing Systems" was organized 1982-91 by the German Technical Interest Group "Fault Tolerant Computing Systems". The other series, known as the "International Conference on Fault-Tolerant Systems and Diagnostics", was organized 1975-90 in the former Czechoslovakia, Poland, Bulgaria and the former GDR. EDCC is organized every 2 or 3 years in European countries. EDCC-1 was held in Berlin (Germany) in October 1994, EDCC-2 in Taormina (Italy) in October 1996 and EDCC-3 in Prague (Czech Republic) in September 1999.