1. Autonomic Pervasive Systems
Sukumar Ghosh
Professor, Department of Computer Science
The University of Iowa
The presence of pervasive systems is taken for granted – only its absence becomes noticeable. So maximize availability and reliability.
Failures are perturbations are like regular events. Self-management is crucial, which is the essence of autonomic systems.
In addition to the known self-* properties, we work on implementing
self-immunity, graceful degradation, and fault-containment. 1

2. Some current work Self-immunity
Self-immune systems detect, profile, and then predict failures. Based on the
prediction, they proactively invoke remedial actions, so that eventually the
failure becomes a non-event. Self-immune systems learn.
Graceful degradation
Failure? Never give up! Find out what minimal service the system can
provide. Make the system spontaneously gravitate to a degraded mode,
and later spontaneously restore full functionality when the fault is repaired.
Fault-containment
Small failures can have a domino effect. Never let that happen. The system
must contain the effect of minor failures, both in space and in time.