Abstract
The University of Bristol established a Safety Systems Research Centre (SSRC) in 1995 to form a focus for safety-related work and bring together the existing multidisciplinary strengths from different departments. The Centre had founding sponsorship from the Civil Aviation Authority, Lloyd’s Register, Nuclear/Magnox Electric, Railtrack and the Health and Safety Executive. This funding was used to develop an underlying research programme on fundamental safety design issues [Hughes, May & Noyes 1997] which was supported by specific but related research contracts. This paper outlines some of the wide range of issues addressed by SSRC staff and some of the progress claimed. In particular it covers the following main topic areas which address important safety and industrial needs:-
-
The development of Structural Statistical Testing Models;
-
The use of fault injection techniques:
-
The quantification of software version diversity;
-
The value of diagnostics for fault tolerance;
-
-
Coding and Communications;
-
Safety analysis of mechatronic surgical devices.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Baker D.A., Brett P.N., Griffiths M.V. and Hughes G., “The Safety Assessment of a mechatronic tool for stapes surgery” (invited). Mechatronics 2000, Germany, September 2000.
I. Blake, G. Seroussi, and N. Smart. Elliptic Curves in Cryptography. London Mathematical Society Lecture Note Series 265, Cambridge UP, 1999.
Brett P.N., Baker D.A. and Blanshard J.A. Precision control of an automatic tool for micro-drilling a stapedotomy, ProclMechE, part H, vol 209, pp255–262, Dec 1995.
Testing the diversity of multi version software using fault injection. Procs of Advances in Safety and Reliability, SARSS (1999) 13.1–13.10
Chen, L., Napier, J., May, J., Hughes, G “A Constant Perturbation Method for Evaluating Structural Diversity of Multiversion Software” Safecomp, Rotterdam 2000
DeMillo,R.A., Lipton,R.J. & Sayward,F.G., “Hints on test data selection: Help for the practicing programmer”, Computer, Vol.11, pp34–41, April 1978.
DeMillo,R.A., Guindi,D.S., McCracken,W.M., & Offutt,A.J., and King,K.N., “An extended overview of the Mothra software testing environment”, Proc. of Second Workshop on Software Testing, Verification, and Analysis, Banff, Canada, pp142–151, July 1988.
Eckhardt, D. & Lee, L., “A theoretical basis for the analysis of multiversion software subject to coincident errors”, IEEE Trans. Software Eng., Vol. SE-11, 1985.
Geoghegan, S.J. & Avresky, D.R., “Method for designing and placing check sets based on control flow analysis of programs”, Proceedings of the International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering, ISSRE, pp.256–265, 1996.
Hughes G., May J.H.R. Noyes J, “Designing for safety: current activities at Bristol University and future directions”, Proc. of the 5th Safety-Critical Systems Symposium, Brighton, UK, February 1997. Springer Verlag
Safety requirements for programmable electrical medical systems – draft. IEC 601–1–4. International Electrotechnical Commission.(1994)
Functional Safety: safety related systems - IEC61508. International Electrotechnical Commission.(1999)
Jenkins, M. A., ACM TOMS, 178–189, 1975
S. Kuball, J. May and G. Hughes, “Structural software reliability estimation”, Lecture Notes in Computer Science 1698, Computer Safety, Reliability and Security, pp 336–349, Springer 1999.
S. Kuball, J. May and G. Hughes, “Building a system failure probability estimator by identifying component failure probabilities”, Proceedings of the 10th International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering, ISSRE’99, pp 32–41, IEEE Computer Society Press, 1999.
S. Kuball, J. May and G. Hughes, “Software reliability estimation for branching structures: a hierarchical approach”, Proceedings of Mathematics Methods for Reliability 2000, Bordeaux/France, July 2000.
]Kumar, V. & Kanal, L.N., “A general Branch and Bound Formulation for Understanding And/Or Tree Search Procedures”, Artificial Intelligence, 21, pp.179–198, 1983.
L. Lafave. “Coding in the Vital Coded Monoprocessor”. SSRC Technical Report SSRC/HSE-2–2000, July 2000.
L. Lafave. “Digital Communication in Safety-related Systems”. SSRC Technical Report SSRC/HSE-1–1999, June 2000.
Littlewood, B. & Miller, D., “A conceptual model of multi-version software”, Proc. of FTCS-17, IEEE 1987.
J. Martin, S. Wartski and C. Galivel. “The Coded Processor: a new concept applied to the safety of transport systems”. In Revue Generale des Chemins de Fer, 109, 1990.
M.J. Martin. “Vital Processing by Single Coded Unit”. In Proceedings 1992 Safety of Computer Control Systems (SAFECOMP 92). Ed. H.H. Frey, Pergamon Press, October 1992.
May, J.H.R. Hughes G & Lunn,A D. “Reliability estimation from appropriate testing of plant protection software”, lEE Software Engineering Journal, Vol 10 Number 6, November 1995.
May,J.H.R. & Lunn,A.D. “A model of code sharing for estimating software failure on demand probabilities,” IEEE Trans on Software Engineering, v21 n9, Sept 1995.
May,J.H.R. & LunnA.D. “New Statistics for demand-based software testing,” Information Processing Letters 53, 1995.
J.H. May, S. Kuball and G. Hughes, “Test Statistics for System Design Failure” International Journal of Reliability, Quality and Safety Engineering, Vol. 6, No. 3, pp. 249–264, 1999.
Metcalf, M. & Rerd, J., “Fortran 90 explained”, Oxford Science. Pub., pp.282, 1988.
Miller,W.M., Morell,L.J., Noonan,R.E., Park,S.K., Nicol,D.M., Murrill,B.W., and Voas,J.M., “Estimating the probability of failure when testing reveals no failures,” IEEE Trans. on Software Engineering v18 n1 1992.
A guideline for hazop studies on systems which include a programmable electronic system - draft. DEF STAN 00–58. MoD Directorate of Standardisation,1995
Napier J, May J H R and Hughes G, Empirical Assessment of Software on-line Diagnostics using Fault Injection. Safecomp, Rotterdam 20000
Quirk, W.J. and Wall, D.N., “Customer Functional Requirements for the Protection System to be used as the DARTS Example”, DARTS consortium deliverable report DARTS-032-HAR-160190-G supplied under the HSE programme on Software Reliability, June 1991.
Medical safety systems (special feature editorial). Computing and Control Engineering Journal (IEE), 6(5): 1995.
Voas, J. M., McGraw, G.: Software Fault Injection: Inoculating programs against errors. Wiley Computer Publishing“, 1998.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2001 Springer-Verlag London Limited
About this paper
Cite this paper
Hughes, G., May, J. (2001). Recent Contributions to System Modelling and Analysis. In: Redmill, F., Anderson, T. (eds) Aspects of Safety Management. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-0713-2_12
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-0713-2_12
Publisher Name: Springer, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-85233-411-6
Online ISBN: 978-1-4471-0713-2
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive