Abstract
Software safety cases encourage developers to carry out only those safety activities that actually reduce risk. In practice this is not always achieved. To help remedy this, the SSEI at the University of York has developed a set of software safety argument patterns. This paper reports on using the patterns in two real-world case studies, evaluating the patterns’ use against criteria that includes flexibility, ability to reveal assurance decits and ability to focus the case on software contributions to hazards. The case studies demonstrated that the safety patterns can be applied to a range of system types regardless of the stage or type of development process, that they help limit safety case activities to those that are significant for achieving safety, and that they help developers nd assurance deficits in their safety case arguments. The case study reports discuss the difficulties of applying the patterns, particularly in the case of users who are unfamiliar with the approach, and the authors recognise in response the need for better instructional material. But the results show that as part of the development of best practice in safety, the patterns promise signicant benets to industrial safety case creators.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Hawkins, R., Kelly, T.: A Systematic Approach for Developing Software Safety Arguments. In: Proceedings of the 27th International System Safety Conference, Huntsville, AL (2009)
Menon C., Hawkins R., McDermid J.: Interim standard of best practice on software in the context of DS 00-56 Issue 4. Technical Report SSEI-BP-000001. Software Systems Engineering Initiative, York (2009), https://ssei.org.uk/documents/
Weaver, R.A.: The safety of Software - Constructing and Assuring Arguments. PhD thesis, Department of Computer Science, The University of York (2003)
Kelly, T.: Arguing Safety - A Systematic Approach to Managing Safety Cases. PhD thesis, Department of Computer Science, The University of York (1998)
Ye, F.: Justifying the Use of COTS Components within Safety Critical Applications. PhD thesis, Department of Computer Science, The University of York (2005)
Barnes, J.: High Integrity Ada - The SPARK Approach. Addison Wesley, Reading (1997)
Hawkins, R., Kelly, T., Knight, J., Graydon, P.: A New Approach to Creating Clear Safety Arguments. In: Proceedings of the Nineteenth Safety-Critical Systems Symposium (SSS 2011), Southampton (2011)
Jaffe, M., Busser, R., Daniels, D., Delseny, H., Romanski, G.: Progress Report on Some Proposed Upgrades to the Conceptual Underpinnings of DO178B/ED-12B. In: Proceedings of the 3rd IET International Conference on System Safety (2008)
Systems Engineering for Autonomous Systems (SEAS) Defence Technology Centre (DTC) http://www.seasdtc.com/
Bardo B.: Autonomous Systems — A New Partnership Between Man and Machine. Presentation to SEAS DTC (2010), http://www.innovate10.co.uk/uploads/BillBardo-theSEASDTC.pdf
Alexander, R., Herbert, N., et al.: Deriving Safety Requirements for Autonomous Systems. In: Proceedings of the 4th SEAS DTC Technical Conference, Edinburgh (2009)
Lamsweerde, A.: Goal-Oriented Requirements Enginering: A Roundtrip from Research to Practice. In: Proceedings of the Requirements Engineering Conference, 12th IEEE International (2004)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Hawkins, R., Clegg, K., Alexander, R., Kelly, T. (2011). Using a Software Safety Argument Pattern Catalogue: Two Case Studies. In: Flammini, F., Bologna, S., Vittorini, V. (eds) Computer Safety, Reliability, and Security. SAFECOMP 2011. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 6894. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-24270-0_14
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-24270-0_14
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-24269-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-24270-0
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)