This book constitutes the proceedings of the Third International Conference on Abstract State Machines, B, VDM, and Z, which took place in Pisa, Italy, in June 2012. The 20 full papers presented together with 2 invited talks and 13 short papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 59 submissions. The ABZ conference series is dedicated to the cross-fertilization of five related state-based and machine-based formal methods: Abstract State Machines (ASM), Alloy, B, VDM, and Z. They share a common conceptual foundation and are widely used in both academia and industry for the design and analysis of hardware and software systems. The main goal of this conference series is to contribute to the integration of these formal methods, clarifying their commonalities and differences to better understand how to combine different approaches for accomplishing the various tasks in modeling, experimental validation and mathematical verification of reliable high-quality hardware/software systems.

ABZ 2010 was held in the beautiful natural setting of Orford in the Eastern Townships of Qu ebec, during February22-25,2010, midwaythroughthe Ca- dian winter and the 21st Winter Olympics, bringing participants from all over the world to brave this rigorous climate. ABZcoversrecentadvancesinfourequallyrigorousmethodsforsoftwareand hardware development: Abstract State Machines (ASM), Alloy, B and Z. They shareacommonconceptualframework, centeredaroundthe notionsofstateand operation, andpromotemathematicalprecisioninthemodeling, veri?cation, and construction of highly dependable systems. These methods have continuously matured over the past decade, reaching a stage where they have been successfully integrated into industrial practice in various areas like trains, automobiles, aerospace, smart cards, virtual machines, and business processes. Their development is in?uenced by both research and practice, which mutually nurture each other. ABZ has both a long and a short history. With the aim of stimulating cro- fertilization between these four methods, it has merged their individual conf- ence and workshopseries which started in 1986 for Z, 1994 for ASM, 1996 for B, and 2006 for Alloy. The ?rst ABZ conference was held in London in 2008; ABZ 2010 is the second edition. The conference remains organized as four separate Program Committe