Software safety : a definition and some preliminary thoughts

Software safety is the subject of a research project in its initial stages at the University of California Irvine. This research deals with critical real-time software where the cost of an error is high, e.g. human life. In this paper software techniques having a bearing on safety are described and evaluated. Initial definitions of software safety concepts are presented along with some preliminary thoughts and research questions

Assessing Food Safety Concepts on the Dairy Farm: The Case of Chemical Hazards

Adaptive conjoint analysis was used to elicit farmers' and experts' preferences for attributes of improving food safety with respect to chemical hazards on the dairy farm. Groups of respondents were determined by cluster analysis based on similar farmers' and experts' perceptions of food safety improvement. Results show differences in priority of the more important attributes. However, respondents in all groups valued "identification of treated cows" as one of the most important attributes. The results provide the processing industry and extension service with a better understanding of aspects that may form farmers' perceptions of improving food safety, and thus help to define the message for targeting different farmer groups.food safety, dairy farm, conjoint analysis, cluster analysis, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

Safety Concepts for Workers from an OSHA Perspective

Highway construction and maintenance workers face numerous hazards on job sites, many of which are unique by industry standards. Despite the exposure of state transportation agency employees and contractors to these hazards, there are few safety standards, regulations, programs that directly target the sector aimed at prevention and mitigation. To help the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet (KYTC) improve employee safety, researchers at the Kentucky Transportation Center (KTC) analyzed the frequency and causes of workplace injuries for 10 essential Cabinet maintenance operations. Most incidents were attributable to human factors or ergonomics. Based on this analysis, the leading causes of incidents, and a review of best practices related to workplace safety, KTC designed and built a pre-task safety tool applicable to the 10 KYTC maintenance operations. Developed in Microsoft Excel, the tool is straightforward and intuitive, addresses the most frequent hazards encountered on jobs sites, and can potentially be expanded to encompass all maintenance operations (once sufficient data are available). The tool contains three sections: 1) an introductory sheet with user instructions; 2) statistical summaries of previous injuries suffered by KYTC maintenance workers for each operation; and 3) examples of incidents that have resulted from each of the most frequent causes of injury and recommended safety practices to minimize or eliminate potential hazards. Site foremen or supervisors can use the tool to develop a pre-task safety talk on scheduled workday activities, their associated hazards, and specific measures to prevent or mitigate those hazards. KTC researchers delivered the pre-task safety tool to KYTC separately

Applying Safety Concepts and Principles in Vital Controller Design

A vital controller is safety critical and its failures, if not mitigated in time, can contribute to hazards in the application system. With electronics advancing and automation increasing, the expanding complexity of a vital controller creates challenges in designing it and assessing its safety integrity level. Typically, traditional safety engineering approaches are not effective for providing systematic guidance to design vital controllers and also not cost efficient for justifying their safety integrity. Through practice on developing multiple Communications-Based Train Control systems, we have identified an approach to using a set of safety concepts as guidance for both safety critical controller design and its safety integrity assessment. These safety concepts are categorized as intrinsic fail-safe, reactive fail-safe, and composite fail-safe. An effective combination of them is applying the composite fail-safe concept in checked redundancy techniques for designing the architecture of a controller, the reactive safety concept for identifying self-testing and monitoring mechanisms in each checked redundant channel, and the intrinsic fail-safe concept for ensuring safe interfaces to other controllers and controlled devices. This paper presents the approach for using these safety concepts and discusses their application principles and verification factors for achieving high safety integrity level of a controller

Safety concepts to enable autonomous train operations in semi-restricted industrial areas

The work performed has been enabled by Business Finland, which provided funding for a research project ‘Autonominen juna -kehityshanke’ - VTT (45715/31/2020), which included collaboration with Proxion Oy, Electric Power Finland Oy, and Steel Wheel Oy for the development of autonomous train in industrial sites. Typically, these sites have small internal rail network forlow-speed transportation of raw materials, semifinished goods, and final products. Since most of the traffic within these sites is caused by the trucks and trains of the industrial site itself, and since the vehicles and persons from outside would need permission to enter, many of such sites can be described as semi-restricted.The study considers other (manual) train traffic in semi-restricted industrial areas but does not consider the driving of an autonomous train on the public main line. The study had two main research objectives. The first objective was to identify and analyse safety risks related to the daily operation of the autonomous train on its route in a semi-restricted industrial area: charging / refuelling station, loading / unloading places, railway switches and level crossings. The second objective was to define concepts to secure the path of an autonomous train and principles to control level crossings and their safety-related systems in three different train traffic control concepts:− An autonomous train has a static local permit in a semi-restricted industrial area− The autonomous train has a dynamic local permit in a semi-restricted industrial area− The rail yard traffic control sets the access permit for the autonomous train in a semi-restricted industrial areaThis report summaries the analysis of new safety risk related to autonomous train operations in semi-restricted industrial areas, including the concepts for safe pathways and safe level crossing controls for autonomous train operations

Safety concepts to enable autonomous train operations in semi-restricted industrial areas

The work performed has been enabled by Business Finland, which provided funding for a research project ‘Autonominen juna -kehityshanke’ - VTT (45715/31/2020), which included collaboration with Proxion Oy, Electric Power Finland Oy, and Steel Wheel Oy for the development of autonomous train in industrial sites. Typically, these sites have small internal rail network forlow-speed transportation of raw materials, semifinished goods, and final products. Since most of the traffic within these sites is caused by the trucks and trains of the industrial site itself, and since the vehicles and persons from outside would need permission to enter, many of such sites can be described as semi-restricted.The study considers other (manual) train traffic in semi-restricted industrial areas but does not consider the driving of an autonomous train on the public main line. The study had two main research objectives. The first objective was to identify and analyse safety risks related to the daily operation of the autonomous train on its route in a semi-restricted industrial area: charging / refuelling station, loading / unloading places, railway switches and level crossings. The second objective was to define concepts to secure the path of an autonomous train and principles to control level crossings and their safety-related systems in three different train traffic control concepts:− An autonomous train has a static local permit in a semi-restricted industrial area− The autonomous train has a dynamic local permit in a semi-restricted industrial area− The rail yard traffic control sets the access permit for the autonomous train in a semi-restricted industrial areaThis report summaries the analysis of new safety risk related to autonomous train operations in semi-restricted industrial areas, including the concepts for safe pathways and safe level crossing controls for autonomous train operations

An analysis of the first grade books of five basal reading systems for health and safety content.

Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston Universit