A new generation of Autonomous systems (UAVs, ROVERs, etc.) is coming that will help improve the situational awareness and assessment, especially in difficult conditions like disasters. Rescuers should be relieved from time-consuming data collection tasks as much as possible and at the same time, Autonomous systems should assist data collection through a more insightful and automated guidance thanks to advanced sensing capabilities. In order to achieve this vision, two challenges must be addressed though. The first one is to achieve a sufficient autonomy. The second one relates to the reliability with respect to accidental (safety) or even malicious (security) risks. This however requires the design of new embedded architectures to be more autonomous, while mitigating the harm they may potentially cause. Increased complexity and flexibility requires resorting to modelling, simulation and formal verification techniques in order to validate such critical aspects.