A Comprehensive Safety Lifecycle

Abstract

CLASS is a novel approach to the safety engineering and management of safety-critical systems in which the system safety case becomes the focus of safety engineering throughout the system lifecycle. CLASS expands the role of the safety case across all phases of the system’s lifetime, from concept formation and problem definition to decommissioning. Having the system safety case as the focus of safety engineering and management only has value if the safety case is properly engineered and appropriately consistent with the system. To achieve these properties, CLASS requires that a system and its safety case be regarded as a single composite entity, always linked and always correctly representing one another. CLASS introduces new techniques for the creation, approval and maintenance of safety cases, a rigorous analysis mechanism that allows determination of properties that relate to defect detection in subject systems, and a set of software support tools.