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Does Software Have to Be Ultra Reliable in Safety Critical Systems?

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Computer Safety, Reliability, and Security (SAFECOMP 2013)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 8153))

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Abstract

It is difficult to demonstrate that safety-critical software is completely free of dangerous faults. Prior testing can be used to demonstrate that the unsafe failure rate is below some bound, but in practice, the bound is not low enough to demonstrate the level of safety performance required for critical software-based systems like avionics. This paper argues higher levels of safety performance can be claimed by taking account of: 1) external mitigation to prevent an accident: 2) the fact that software is corrected once failures are detected in operation. A model based on these concepts is developed to derive an upper bound on the number of expected failures and accidents under different assumptions about fault fixing, diagnosis, repair and accident mitigation. A numerical example is used to illustrate the approach. The implications and potential applications of the theory are discussed.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Software Reliability, City University, London, EC1V 0HB, UK

    Peter Bishop

  2. Adelard LLP, London, Exmouth House, London, EC1R 0JH, UK

    Peter Bishop

Authors
  1. Peter Bishop
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Thales Transportations Systems GmbH, Lorenzstraße 10, 70435, Stuttgart, Germany

    Friedemann Bitsch

  2. Laboratory of Analysis and Architecture of Systems (LAAS-CNRS), Dependable Computing anf Fault Tolerance Group, University of Toulouse, 7 Avenue du Colonel Roche, 31031, Toulouse, France

    Jérémie Guiochet

  3. Laboratory of Analysis and Architecture of Systems (LAAS-CNRS), Dependable Computing anf Fault Tolerance Group, University of Toulouse, 7 avenue du Colonel Roche, 31031, Toulouse, France

    Mohamed Kaâniche

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Bishop, P. (2013). Does Software Have to Be Ultra Reliable in Safety Critical Systems?. In: Bitsch, F., Guiochet, J., Kaâniche, M. (eds) Computer Safety, Reliability, and Security. SAFECOMP 2013. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 8153. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-40793-2_11

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-40793-2_11

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-40792-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-40793-2

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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