  Abstract State Machines (ASMs) have been successfully applied for modeling
critical and complex systems in a wide range of application domains. However,
unlike other well-known formalisms, e.g. Petri nets, ASMs lack inherent,
domain-independent characterisations of computationally important properties.
Here, we provide an ASM-based characterisation of the starvation-free property.
The classic, informal notion of starvation, usually provided in literature, is
analysed and expressed as a necessary condition in terms of ASMs. Thus, we
enrich the ASM framework with the notion of vulnerable rule as a practical tool
for analysing starvation issues in an operational fashion
