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How to Analyze the Safety of Concepts for a System-of-Systems?
Volvo Construction Equipment, Eskilstuna, Sweden.
Mälardalen University, School of Innovation, Design and Engineering, Embedded Systems.ORCID iD: 0000-0001-8891-033X
Mälardalen University, School of Innovation, Design and Engineering, Embedded Systems.ORCID iD: 0000-0001-5269-3900
2021 (English)In: 7TH IEEE INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON SYSTEMS ENGINEERING, 2021, p. 1-8Conference paper, Published paper (Refereed)
Abstract [en]

Developing safety-critical products like cars, trains, or airplanes requires rigor in following development processes, and evidence for product safety must be collected. Safety needs to be considered during each development step and traced through the development life cycle. The current standards and approaches focus on single human-operated products. The technical evolution enables integrating existing products and new autonomous products into system-of-systems to automate workflows and production streams. Developing safety-critical systems-of-systems requires similar processes and mapping to safety-related activities. However, it is unclear how to consider safety during different development steps for a safety-critical system-of-systems. The existing hazard analysis methods are not explicitly mapped to developing a system-of-systems and are vague about the required information on the intended behavior. This paper focuses on the concept phase for developing a system-of-systems, where different technical concepts for a specific product feature are evaluated. Specifically, we concentrate on the evaluation of the safety properties of each concept. We present a process to support the concept phase and apply a model-driven approach to capture the system-of-systems’ relevant information. We then show how this knowledge is used for conducting an FMEA and HAZOP analysis. Lastly, the results from the analysis are mapped back into the sequence diagrams. This information is made available during the next development stages. We apply the method during the concept phase for designing an industrial system-of-systems. Our approach helps to design complex system-of-systems and supports concept evaluation considering the criticality of the concept under consideration.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2021. p. 1-8
Keywords [en]
Airplanes;Production;Hazards;Product safety;Automobiles;Modeling;Standards;Hazard Analysis and Risk Assessment;System-of-Systems;Autonomous Machines;Safety;Concept Phase
National Category
Computer Systems
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:mdh:diva-56427DOI: 10.1109/ISSE51541.2021.9582527ISI: 000848245100036Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85119099341OAI: oai:DiVA.org:mdh-56427DiVA, id: diva2:1609994
Conference
2021 IEEE International Symposium on Systems Engineering (ISSE)
Available from: 2021-11-09 Created: 2021-11-09 Last updated: 2022-11-18Bibliographically approved
In thesis
1. Safety Analysis of Systems-of-Systems
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Safety Analysis of Systems-of-Systems
2022 (English)Doctoral thesis, comprehensive summary (Other academic)
Abstract [en]

Safety-critical systems may fail dangerously with severe consequences to the health of the involved humans, costly equipment, the environment, or other valuable assets of a stakeholder. For these classes of systems, the developers are obliged to analyze each potentially hazardous situation thoroughly. In addition, any identified hazardous situation needs to be considered for risk reduction measures, including adjustments of the system's design, additional safeguards if the hazards cannot entirely be removed by design, or warning information to users.  

An essential activity in the development process is the safety analysis, where hazards related to the system under development are identified, and the risks are evaluated and classified. This classification stipulates the rigor of complying with safety standard requirements and directing the development and verification activities. Several techniques for safety analysis have been identified in the literature and are applied in industrial development processes.

The technical evolution enables moving from developing single systems with specific features towards attaching several independent systems to a system-of-systems.On top of the trend towards connectedness, there is also a trend towards more and more automation. In the vehicle domain, autonomous vehicles can collaborate to achieve specific goals, like transporting goods in warehouses, transporting containers in automated ports, or transporting material in off-road environments.

Autonomy brings in new challenges when ensuring product safety and functional safety for single systems due to the lack of a human operator as a fallback solution.Further, when autonomous vehicles collaborate in a fleet, the safety analysis becomes more complex since their interaction and interoperability bring forth new hazards not identifiable with a safety analysis of a single system. Our research aims to bridge this gap and provide solutions for specifying a system-of-systems and finding and developing suitable safety analysis methods.

To understand the challenges and current practices, we have studied industrial projects where systems-of-systems are developed. We have applied safety analysis methods to our industrial cases and found limitations of finding hazards related to a system-of-systems. As part of our research, we have developed extensions to the safety analysis methods to support the analysis of a system-of-systems. We have developed the Safe System-of-Systems (SafeSoS) method which is a structured and hierarchical process to discover and document a system-of-systems characteristics on three primary abstraction levels. Additionally, we utilize model-based formalism to describe the System-of-Systems’ characteristics on each level. Our research results support engineers in the industry when designing a safety-critical system-of-systems.

Abstract [sv]

Safety-critical systems may fail dangerously with severe consequences to the health of the involved humans, costly equipment, the environment, or other valuable assets of a stakeholder. For these classes of systems, the developers are obliged to analyze each potentially hazardous situation thoroughly. In addition, any identified hazardous situation needs to be considered for risk reduction measures, including adjustments of the system's design, additional safeguards if the hazards cannot entirely be removed by design, or warning information to users.  An essential activity in the development process is the safety analysis, where hazards related to the system under development are identified, and the risks are evaluated and classified. This classification stipulates the rigor of complying with safety standard requirements and directing the development and verification activities. Several techniques for safety analysis have been identified in the literature and are applied in industrial development processes.The technical evolution enables moving from developing single systems with specific features towards attaching several independent systems to a system-of-systems.On top of the trend towards connectedness, there is also a trend towards more and more automation. In the vehicle domain, autonomous vehicles can collaborate to achieve specific goals, like transporting goods in warehouses, transporting containers in automated ports, or transporting material in off-road environments.Autonomy brings in new challenges when ensuring product safety and functional safety for single systems due to the lack of a human operator as a fallback solution.Further, when autonomous vehicles collaborate in a fleet, the safety analysis becomes more complex since their interaction and interoperability bring forth new hazards not identifiable with a safety analysis of a single system. Our research aims to bridge this gap and provide solutions for specifying a system-of-systems and finding and developing suitable safety analysis methods.To understand the challenges and current practices, we have studied industrial projects where systems-of-systems are developed. We have applied safety analysis methods to our industrial cases and found limitations of finding hazards related to a system-of-systems. As part of our research, we have developed extensions to the safety analysis methods to support the analysis of a system-of-systems. We have developed the Safe System-of-Systems (SafeSoS) method which is a structured and hierarchical process to discover and document a system-of-systems characteristics on three primary abstraction levels. Additionally, we utilize model-based formalism to describe the System-of-Systems’ characteristics on each level. Our research results support engineers in the industry when designing a safety-critical system-of-systems.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Västerås: Mälardalen University, 2022
Series
Mälardalen University Press Dissertations, ISSN 1651-4238 ; 355
Keywords
System-of-Systems, Safety Analysis, Hazard Analysis, Model-based Development
National Category
Computer Systems
Research subject
Computer Science
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:mdh:diva-56680 (URN)978-91-7485-542-5 (ISBN)
Public defence
2022-01-14, Zeta (och Zoom), Mälardalens högskola, Västerås, 13:00 (English)
Opponent
Supervisors
Available from: 2021-12-06 Created: 2021-12-04 Last updated: 2022-11-08Bibliographically approved

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