The Last Decade in Review: Tracing the Evolution of Safety Assurance Cases through a Comprehensive Bibliometric Analysis

Safety assurance is of paramount importance across various domains, including automotive, aerospace, and nuclear energy, where the reliability and acceptability of mission-critical systems are imperative. This assurance is effectively realized through the utilization of Safety Assurance Cases. The use of safety assurance cases allows for verifying the correctness of the created systems capabilities, preventing system failure. The latter may result in loss of life, severe injuries, large-scale environmental damage, property destruction, and major economic loss. Still, the emergence of complex technologies such as cyber-physical systems (CPSs), characterized by their heterogeneity, autonomy, machine learning capabilities, and the uncertainty of their operational environments poses significant challenges for safety assurance activities. Several papers have tried to propose solutions to tackle these challenges, but to the best of our knowledge, no secondary study investigates the trends, patterns, and relationships characterizing the safety case scientific literature. This makes it difficult to have a holistic view of the safety case landscape and to identify the most promising future research directions. In this paper, we, therefore, rely on state-of-the-art bibliometric tools(e.g., VosViewer) to conduct a bibliometric analysis that allows us to generate valuable insights, identify key authors and venues, and gain a birds eye view of the current state of research in the safety assurance area. By revealing knowledge gaps and highlighting potential avenues for future research, our analysis provides an essential foundation for researchers, corporate safety analysts, and regulators seeking to embrace or enhance safety practices that align with their specific needs and objectives

Sources of Variations in Error Sensitivity of Computer Systems

Technology scaling is reducing the reliability of integrated circuits. This makes it important to provide computers with mechanisms that can detect and correct hardware errors. This thesis deals with the problem of assessing the hardware error sensitivity of computer systems. Error sensitivity, which is the likelihood that a hardware error will escape detection and produce an erroneous output, measures a system’s inability to detect hardware errors. This thesis present the results of a series of fault injection experiments that investigated how er- ror sensitivity varies for different system characteristics, including (i) the inputs processed by a program, (ii) a program’s source code implementation, and (iii) the use of compiler optimizations. The study focused on the impact of tran- sient hardware faults that result in bit errors in CPU registers and main memory locations. We investigated how the error sensitivity varies for single-bit errors vs. double-bit errors, and how error sensitivity varies with respect to machine instructions that were targeted for fault injection. The results show that the in- put profile and source code implementation of the investigated programs had a major impact on error sensitivity, while using different compiler optimizations caused only minor variations. There was no significant difference in error sen- sitivity between single-bit and double-bit errors. Finally, the error sensitivity seems to depend more on the type of data processed by an instruction than on the instruction type

Making the Implicit Explicit: Towards an Assurance Case for DO-178C

For about two decades, compliance with Software Considerations in Airborne Systems and Equipment Certification (DO-178B) has been the primary means for receiving regulatory approval for using software on commercial airplanes. A new edition of the standard, DO-178C, was published in December 2011, and regulatory bodies have started the process towards recognizing this edition. The stated purpose of DO-178C remains unchanged from its predecessor: providing guidance for the production of software for airborne systems and equipment that performs its intended function with a level of confidence in safety that complies with airworthiness requirements. Within the text of the guidance, little or no rationale is given for how a particular objective or collection of objectives contributes to achieving this purpose. Thus the assurance case for the document is implicit. This paper discusses a current effort to make the implicit explicit. In particular, the paper describes the current status of the research seeking to identify the specific arguments contained in, or implied by, the DO-178C guidance that implicitly justify the assumption that the document meets its stated purpose

A system-theoretic safety engineering approach for software-intensive systems

In the software development process, formal verification and functional testing are complementary approaches which are used to verify the functional correctness of software; however, even perfectly reliable software could lead to an accident. The correctness of software cannot ensure the safe operation of safety-critical software systems. Therefore, developing safety-critical software requires a more systematic software and safety engineering process that enables the software and safety engineers to recognize the potential software risks. For this purpose, this dissertation introduces a comprehensive safety engineering approach based on STPA for Software-Intensive Systems, called STPA SwISs, which provides seamless STPA safety analysis and software safety verification activities to allow the software and safety engineers to work together during the software development for safety-critical systems and help them to recognize the associated software risks at the system level

Prävention, Detektion und Reaktion gegen drei Ausprägungsformen automotiver Malware : eine methodische Analyse im Spektrum von Manipulationen und Schutzkonzepten

Magdeburg, Univ., Fak. für Informatik, Diss., 2014von Tobias Hopp

Model-Based Engineering of Collaborative Embedded Systems

This Open Access book presents the results of the "Collaborative Embedded Systems" (CrESt) project, aimed at adapting and complementing the methodology underlying modeling techniques developed to cope with the challenges of the dynamic structures of collaborative embedded systems (CESs) based on the SPES development methodology. In order to manage the high complexity of the individual systems and the dynamically formed interaction structures at runtime, advanced and powerful development methods are required that extend the current state of the art in the development of embedded systems and cyber-physical systems. The methodological contributions of the project support the effective and efficient development of CESs in dynamic and uncertain contexts, with special emphasis on the reliability and variability of individual systems and the creation of networks of such systems at runtime. The project was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), and the case studies are therefore selected from areas that are highly relevant for Germany’s economy (automotive, industrial production, power generation, and robotics). It also supports the digitalization of complex and transformable industrial plants in the context of the German government's "Industry 4.0" initiative, and the project results provide a solid foundation for implementing the German government's high-tech strategy "Innovations for Germany" in the coming years

Fundamental Approaches to Software Engineering

computer software maintenance; computer software selection and evaluation; formal logic; formal methods; formal specification; programming languages; semantics; software engineering; specifications; verificatio

A systematic development of a secure architecture for the European Rail Traffic Management System

The European Rail Traffic Management System (ERTMS) is a new signalling scheme that is being implemented worldwide with the aim of improving interoperability and cross-border operation. It is also an example of an Industrial Control System, a safety-critical system which, in recent years, has been subject to a number of attacks and threats. In these systems, safety is the primary concern of the system designers, whilst security is sometimes an afterthought. It is therefore prudent to assure the security for current and future threats, which could affect the safe operation of the railway. In this thesis, we present a systematic security analysis of parts of the ERTMS standard, firstly reviewing the security offered by the protocols used in ERTMS using the ProVerif tool. We will then assess the custom MAC algorithm used by the platform and identify issues that exist in each of the ERTMS protocol layers, and aim to propose solutions to those issues. We also identify a challenge presented by the introduction of ERTMS to National Infrastructure Managers surrounding key management, where we also propose a novel key management scheme, TRAKS, which reduces its complexity. We then define a holistic process for asset owners to carry out their own security assessments for their architectures and consider the unique challenges that are presented by Industrial Control Systems and how these can be mitigated to ensure security of these systems. Drawing conclusions from these analyses, we introduce the notion of a `secure architecture' and review the current compliance of ERTMS against this definition, identifying the changes required in order for it to have a secure architecture, both now and also in the future

Safety and Reliability - Safe Societies in a Changing World

The contributions cover a wide range of methodologies and application areas for safety and reliability that contribute to safe societies in a changing world. These methodologies and applications include: - foundations of risk and reliability assessment and management - mathematical methods in reliability and safety - risk assessment - risk management - system reliability - uncertainty analysis - digitalization and big data - prognostics and system health management - occupational safety - accident and incident modeling - maintenance modeling and applications - simulation for safety and reliability analysis - dynamic risk and barrier management - organizational factors and safety culture - human factors and human reliability - resilience engineering - structural reliability - natural hazards - security - economic analysis in risk managemen