This special issue of the journal Logical Methods in Computer Science (LMCS) contains revised and extended versions of four papers presented at the 18th International Conference on Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems (TACAS'12), held in Tallinn, Estonia during March 24 - April 1, 2012, as part of the Joint European Conferences on Theory and Practice of Software (ETAPS).

The papers collected in this special issue have been invited by the guest editors amongst the top papers presented at TACAS 2012 based on their relevance to LMCS. We are grateful to all authors for their contributions and to the reviewers of TACAS'12 and of this special issue for their thorough and valuable work.