Assurance Benefits of ISO 26262 compliant Microcontrollers for safety-critical Avionics

The usage of complex Microcontroller Units (MCUs) in avionic systems constitutes a challenge in assuring their safety. They are not developed according to the development requirements accepted by the aerospace industry. These Commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware components usually target other domains like the telecommunication branch. In the last years MCUs developed in compliance to the ISO 26262 have been released on the market for safety-related automotive applications. The avionic assurance process could profit from these safety MCUs. In this paper we present evaluation results based on the current assurance practice that demonstrates expected assurance activities benefit from ISO 26262 compliant MCUs.Comment: Submitted to SafeComp 2018: http://www.es.mdh.se/safecomp2018

Climate change scenarios in use: heat stress in Switzerland

Under hot conditions the human body is able to regulate its core temperature via sweat evaporation, but this ability is reduced when air humidity is high. These conditions of high temperature and high humidity invoke heat stress which is a major problem for humans, in particular for vulnerable groups of the population and people under physical stress (e.g. heavy duty work without appropriate cooling systems). It is generally expected that the frequency, duration and magnitude of such unfavorable conditions will increase with further climate warming. In this respect, climate services play a crucial role by putting together climatological information and adaptation solutions to reduce future heat stress. We here assess the recently developed CH2018 scenarios for Switzerland (https://www.climate-scenarios.ch) in terms of heat stress conditions including their future projections. For this purpose, we characterize future extreme heat conditions with the use of climate analogs. By doing so, we attempt to produce more accessible climate information which might foster the use and understanding of regional-scale climate scenarios. Here heat stress is expressed through the Wet Bulb Temperature (TW), which is a relatively simple proxy for heat stress on the human body and which depends non-linearly on temperature and humidity. It is assessed in terms of single-day events and heat stress spells. Projections based on the CH2018 scenarios indicate increasing heat stress over Switzerland, which is accentuated towards the end of the century. High heat stress conditions might be about 3?5 times more frequent for an emission scenario without mitigation (RCP 8.5) than for the mitigation scenario (RCP 2.6) by the end of the 21st century. The projected increase of heat stress results in more and longer heat stress spells, thus highlighting the importance of timely and precise prevention strategies in the context of heat-health action plans. Spatial climate analogs based on heat stress spells in Switzerland greatly vary depending on the emission scenario and are found in Central Europe under a mitigation scenario and in southern Europe under unmitigated warming.Financial support for this work is provided by the HEAT-SHIELD Project (European Commission HORIZON 2020, research and innovation programme under the grant agreement 668786). A.C. acknowledges support from Project COMPOUND (TED2021-131334A-I00) funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and by the European Union NextGenerationEU/PRTR

Climate projections of a multivariate heat stress index: the role of downscaling and bias correction

Along with the higher demand for bias-corrected data for climate impact studies, the number of available data sets has largely increased in recent years. For instance, the Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISIMIP) constitutes a framework for consistently projecting the impacts of climate change across affected sectors and spatial scales. These data are very attractive for any impact application since they offer worldwide bias-corrected data based on global climate models (GCMs). In a complementary way, the CORDEX initiative has incorporated experiments based on regionally downscaled bias-corrected data by means of debiasing and quantile mapping (QM) methods. In light of this situation, it is challenging to distil the most accurate and useful information for climate services, but at the same time it creates a perfect framework for intercomparison and sensitivity analyses. In the present study, the trend-preserving ISIMIP method and empirical QM are applied to climate model simulations that were carried out at different spatial resolutions (CMIP5 GCM and EURO-CORDEX regional climate models (RCMs), at approximately 150, 50 and 12 km horizontal resolution) in order to assess the role of downscaling and bias correction in a multivariate framework. The analysis is carried out for the wet-bulb globe temperature (WBGT), a heat stress index that is commonly used in the context of working people and labour productivity. WBGT for shaded conditions depends on air temperature and dew-point temperature, which in this work are individually bias corrected prior to the index calculation. Our results show that the added value of RCMs with respect to the driving GCM is limited after bias correction. The two bias correction methods are able to adjust the central part of the WBGT distribution, but some added value of QM is found in WBGT percentiles and in the inter-variable relationships. The evaluation in present climate of such multivariate indices should be performed with caution since biases in the individual variables might compensate, thus leading to better performance for the wrong reason. Climate change projections of WBGT reveal a larger increase in summer mean heat stress for the GCM than for the RCMs, related to the well-known reduced summer warming of the EURO-CORDEX RCMs. These differences are lowered after QM, since this bias correction method modifies the change signals and brings the results for the GCM and RCMs closer to each other. We also highlight the need for large ensembles of simulations to assess the feasibility of the derived projections.This research has been supported by the European Commission (HEAT-SHIELD (668786))

Robuste geostatistische Methoden zur räumlichen Analyse und Kartierung von Bodeneigenschaften

Die von Künsch et al. (2010) entwickelte robuste geostatistische Methode erlaubt die räumliche Analyse von Zusammenhängen mit der Zielvariablen (Strukturmatrix). Die Schätzung der Regressionskoeffizienten der räumlichen Trendmodellierung erfolgt simultan mit der robusten Schätzung der Kovarianzfunktion. Der Einfluss lokaler „Extremwerte“ kann hierbei wahlweise mehr oder weniger stark mit einer Gewichtungsfunktion eingeschränkt werden. Vor dem Hintergrund heterogener Datensätze für Bodeneigenschaften, welche aus unterschiedlichen Datenquellen stammen, liefert die robuste Schätzmethode zuverlässigere Schätzwerte (und Schätzvarianzen) als die klassische Kriging-Methode

Escalating environmental summer heat exposure - a future threat for the European workforce

Heat exposure constitutes a major threat for European workers, with significant impacts on the workers' health and productivity. Climate projections over the next decades show a continuous and accelerated warming over Europe together with longer, more intense and more frequent heatwaves on regional and local scales. In this work, we assess the increased risk in future occupational heat stress levels using the wet bulb globe temperature (WBGT), an index adopted by the International Standards Organization as regulatory index to measure the heat exposure of working people. Our results show that, in large parts of Europe, future heat exposure will indeed exceed critical levels for physically active humans far more often than in today?s climate, and labour productivity might be largely reduced in southern Europe. European industries should adapt to the projected changes to prevent major consequences for the workers? health and to preserve economic productivity.Financial support for this work is provided by the HEAT-SHIELD Project (European Commission HORIZON 2020, research and innovation programme under the grant agreement 668786). The authors wish to thank the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS) for providing the technical infrastructure

An occupational heat-health warning system for Europe: the HEAT-SHIELD Platform

Existing heat?health warning systems focus on warning vulnerable groups in order to reduce mortality. However, human health and performance are affected at much lower environmental heat strain levels than those directly associated with higher mortality. Moreover, workers are at elevated health risks when exposed to prolonged heat. This study describes the multilingual ?HEAT-SHIELD occupational warning system? platform (https://heatshield.zonalab.it/) operating for Europe and developed within the framework of the HEAT-SHIELD project. This system is based on probabilistic medium-range forecasts calibrated on approximately 1800 meteorological stations in Europe and provides the ensemble forecast of the daily maximum heat stress. The platform provides a non-customized output represented by a map showing the weekly maximum probability of exceeding a specific heat stress condition, for each of the four upcoming weeks. Customized output allows the forecast of the personalized local heat-stress-risk based on workers? physical, clothing and behavioral characteristics and the work environment (outdoors in the sun or shade), also taking into account heat acclimatization. Personal daily heat stress risk levels and behavioral suggestions (hydration and work breaks recommended) to be taken into consideration in the short term (5 days) are provided together with long-term heat risk forecasts (up to 46 days), all which are useful for planning work activities. The HEAT-SHIELD platform provides adaptation strategies for ?managing? the impact of global warmingFinancial support for this work is provided by the HEAT-SHIELD Project (HORIZON 2020, research and innovation programme under the grant agreement 668786). L.N and B.R.M.K were also supported by the ClimApp project coordinated via ERA4CS (European Research for Climate Service) and funded by FORMAS (SWE), IFD (DK), NWO (NL) with co-funding from the European Union (grant agreement 690462)