Safety life cycle

Safety life cycle

The safety life cycle is the series of phases from initiation and specifications of safety requirements, covering design and development of safety features in a safety-critical system, and ending in decommissioning of that system.

The basic concept in building software safety, ie safety features in software, is that safety characteristics and behaviour of the software and system must be specified and designed into the system.

The problem for any systems designer lies in reducing the risk to an acceptable level and of course, the risk tolerated will vary between applications.

When a software application is to be used in a safety-related system, then this must be borne in mind at all stages in the software lifecycle.

The process of safety specification and assurance throughout the development and operational phases is sometimes called the ‘safety life cycle’.

The first stages of the life cycle involve assessing the potential system hazards and estimating the risk they pose. One such method is fault tree analysis.

This is followed by a safety requirements specification which is concerned with identifying safety-critical functions (functional requirements specification) and the safety integrity level for each of these functions. The specification may either describe how the software should behave to minimize the risk or might require that the hazard should never arise.

A ‘normal’ process model is then followed with particular attention paid to the validation (inspection, testing etc) of the system. Part of that validation should be an explicit safety validation activity.

ee also

*Safety engineering


Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Поможем написать реферат

Look at other dictionaries:

  • Life-cycle assessment — Cradle to grave redirects here. For other uses, see Cradle to the Grave (disambiguation). A life cycle assessment (LCA, also known as life cycle analysis, ecobalance, and cradle to grave analysis)[1] is a technique to assess environmental impacts …   Wikipedia

  • Organizational life cycle — The organizational life cycle is the life cycle of an organization from its creation to its termination.[1] There are five level/stages in any organization. Birth Growth Maturity Decline Death According to Richard L. Daft [2] there are four… …   Wikipedia

  • Product Life Cycle Management — The observation of an item as it moves through the typical stages of development, growth, maturity and decline. Effective product life cycle management brings together the many companies, departments and employees involved with the product s… …   Investment dictionary

  • Safety Integrity Level — (SIL) is defined as a relative level of risk reduction provided by a safety function, or to specify a target level of risk reduction. In simple terms, SIL is a measurement of performance required for a Safety Instrumented Function (SIF).Four SIL… …   Wikipedia

  • Safety Integrity Level — (SIL) определяет соответствующий уровень уменьшения опасности от возникновения аварий и катастроф, обеспечиваемый функционалом средств и систем повышенной безопасности или указывает целевой уровень уменьшения риска возникновения опасной… …   Википедия

  • Life Sciences — ▪ 2009 Introduction Zoology       In 2008 several zoological studies provided new insights into how species life history traits (such as the timing of reproduction or the length of life of adult individuals) are derived in part as responses to… …   Universalium

  • Cycle Friendly Awards — Trophies for the winners of the five categories of the 2009 Cycle Friendly Awards The New Zealand Cycle Friendly Awards were devised by the Cycling Advocates Network (CAN) in 2003. The purpose of the awards is to acknowledge and celebrate some of …   Wikipedia

  • Life table — 2003 US mortality table, Table 1, Page 1 In actuarial science, a life table (also called a mortality table or actuarial table) is a table which shows, for each age, what the probability is that a person of that age will die before his or her next …   Wikipedia

  • Cycle Action Auckland — Auckland Region Abbreviation CAA …   Wikipedia

  • Life Safety Code — Administered, copyrighted, and published by the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), the Life Safety Code, known as NFPA 101 is the registered trademark of an American consensus standard which, like many NFPA documents, is systematically… …   Wikipedia

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”