40 Years of Computing at Newcastle

Department Technical Report Series No. 504

Analysis of Safety Requirements in the Context of System Faults and Human Errors

R. de Lemos
B. Fields
A. Saeed

University of Newcastle upon Tyne. 1994

Abstract

This paper describes an approach to the incremental and iterative analysis of requirements for safety-critical systems. The novel feature of the approach is that properties related to users of safety-critical systems are also considered in the analysis. Safety strategies are developed to ensure that hazard states are avoided and the system's integrity is maintained in the presence of failures in the system components. The approach supports an understanding of human error and the formulation of human error tolerance requirements ensuring that safety is preserved in the presence of user errors. The approach is illustrated with an example from the aerospace industry, and complementary safety strategies that allocate functionality to both the pilot and the computing systems are presented.


Department Technical Report Series - 1994
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Technical Report Abstract No. 504, 30 June 1997