Source: http://www.comlab.ox.ac.uk/archive/safety.html

Virtual Library Computing Software Engineering Hazards and Risk

# Safety-Critical Systems

Please mail J.P.Bowen@reading.ac.uk if you know of relevant on-line information not included here.

This document contains pointers to information on Safety-Critical Systems available around the world on the World Wide Web (WWW), the global hypermedia system providing worldwide information. Information on the following is available:

  Relevant newsgroups
  Repositories and mailing lists
  Courses
  Clubs and organizations
  On-line publications
  Journals
  Books
  Meetings
  Searchable bibliography

indicates new information. indicates (subjectively) recommended information.

## Relevant newsgroups

- The ACM Forum on Risks and the associated moderated newsgroup comp.risks is recommended reading. You can join the gatewayed RISKS mailing list (only if you cannot access the newsgroup for some reason please!) by sending an email request to risks-request@csl.sri.com. Submissions for possible inclusion may be sent to risks@csl.sri.com. RISKS back-issues and a searchable database via WAISGATE are available on-line. A RISKS archive in the UK is also available, including the latest issue and searching. Submissions are sometimes included in the ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes.

- Discussion on safety-critical systems also crops up in comp.software-eng from time to time. Messages relating to formal methods and software safety in this newsgroup have been archived.

- The sci.aeronautics.airliners newsgroup often includes discussion and information on aircraft safety.

- The sci.engr.safety newsgroup on the Safety of Engineered Systems has been established by Sethu Rathinam rathinam@netins.net (see RISKS DIGEST 16.53, November 1994). This was passed by 334 votes to 11 (20 March 1995).

## Repositories and mailing lists

- A BibTeX bibliographic database of publications of relevance to safety-critical systems (second sourced in the US). A revised version of the bibliography is searchable.

- NASA Langley formal methods program including many applications to safety-critical systems.

- At the Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie-Mellon University, there is an archive of information relevant to dependable software including a `README` file. There is an associated mailing list. Contact Charles Weinstock on weinstoc@sei.cmu.edu for further information. Messages for the list should be sent to depend-sw@sei.cmu.edu.

- Jonathan Moffett ( jdm@minster.york.ac.uk) of the High Integrity Systems Engineering Group (HISE), Department of Computer Science, University of York, UK, runs a safety-critical mailing list forum. To join the mailing list, send a short message expressing your interests and expertise in the subject to hise-safety-critical-request@minster.york.ac.uk. To send messages to the list, email hise-safety-critical@minster.york.ac.uk. An archive of past messages is maintained. In addition, HISE reports are available. A bibliography including around 2,500 references in compressed EndNote and refer formats (see `README` file) is available. Email hise-refs@minster.york.ac.uk with updates, etc.

- An archive of aviation safety information especially with respect to fly-by-wire aircraft such as the Airbus A320 and the Boeing 777 is available. For example, see the plot of the aviation safety size of software packages of various avionics implementations over the years. This archive is maintained by Robert Dorsett, rdd@netcom.com.

- The Center for High Assurance Computing Systems at Information Technology Division of the Naval Research Laboratory conducts interdisciplinary research and development in techniques for processing and communicating data that preserve critical system properties such as safety.

- The ESPRIT ProCoS and PDCS Basic Research projects are investigating techniques concerned with improvements for safety-critical systems.

- The Experimental Computation Laboratory is an organization in the Computer Science Department at the University of Missouri - Rolla dedicated to research in advanced methods in distributed and parallel computation. The current focus is on the use of rigorous mathematics through formal methods to create fault-tolerant and secure real-time distributed computing systems.

- The High Integrity Systems Engineering Group (University of York, UK) undertakes research into all aspects of high integrity computer-based systems, including the ASAM-II project dedicated to the production of a prototype Safety Argument Manager and method.

- Gopherspace search for information relating to safety via Veronica.

- Information on Software Risk Management (including the SEI Program on Software Risk Management) and Dependability from the Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, USA.

- ESPRIT Basic Research: PDCS 2 (Predictably Dependable Computing Systems), ProCoS II and ProCoS-WG (Provably Correct Systems).

- The TTM/RTTL framework for real-time reactive programs and devices found in embedded, safety-critical, or concurrent systems.

- High Integrity Software System Assurance (HISSA), NIST, USA.

- NASA Information Services including Goddard Space Flight Center and Johnson Space Center.

- Search for "safety critical" by Lycos.

- Safety-related publications from the IEE, UK.

- Center for High Assurance Computer Systems, Naval Research Laboratory, USA.

- Software Integrity using SPARK ADA from DRA, UK.

- Formal Methods Group, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK. Dependable computing systems research.

- Internet Disaster Information Network - latest news on disaster situations.

- Safety Critical Systems: Review of recent Institution activity from the IEE, UK. See Safety-related systems: Guidance for engineers and Workshop report on Formal methods and their role in developing safe systems, 20 March 1995.

- Incidents and Accidents with Fly-By-Wire Commercial Airplanes by Prof Peter Ladkin, with hyperlinks to RISKS articles.

- The Aviation Disaster/Crash Page.

- Safety Research project home page including a Safety Bibliography and safety links by Prof. Nancy Leveson et al. at the University of Washington.

- Adelard, London, UK. Consultancy in the area of dependable systems, including safety cases. See a useful list of safety-related links, including standards.

- Praxis Critical Systems, Bath, UK. Praxis specialises in all aspects of high-integrity systems. See SPARK Software Engineering, an integrated approach to the design, development and verification of complex software. Contact Denton Clutterbuck for more information.

- Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB), Department of Transport, UK.

- Health and Safty Executive (HSE), UK.

- ARIANE 5 Flight 501 Failure Report, 19 July 1996, from the European Space Agency (ESA).

- Safety information from NASA Office of Flight Assurance, USA.

- MIL STD 882C, System Safety Programme Requirements, US military safety standard. (See also Appendix A.)

- FAA Office of Regulation and Certification, promoting safety standards, including the Office of Accident Investigation, from the US Federal Aviation Administration. See the Aviation Safety Program and recent Preliminary Accident/Incident Reports.

- Safety-Critical Systems information including a list of funded projects from the EPSRC, UK. See also Critical Systems Programme (1 October 1996).

- Report to the Defence and Aerospace Foresight Panel, Executive Summary, High Integrity Real-Time Software Working Party, NPL, prepared under the auspices of the BCS.

- Programme for Highly Dependable Systems, Department of Computer Science, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa.

- UK DTI/ EPSRC Safety-Critical Systems Programme. See also a listing of reports and papers from the UK DTI/EPSRC-funded Safety Critical Systems R&D Programme (in Word 6.0 format).

- Glasgow Accident Analysis Group, UK. Developing new means of generating accident reports using formal methods. See Workshop on Human Error and Systems Development, University of Glasgow, UK, 20-22 March 1997.

See also information on formal methods which are often recommended for safety-critical systems.

## Courses

Critical Systems Engineering course, Integrated Graduate Development Programme in Software Engineering, Oxford University, UK.

Modular MSc in Safety Critical Systems Engineering, University of York, UK.

MSc in Safety-Critical Systems, Royal Holloway College, University of London, UK.

Safety-Critical Systems Short Course, Continuing Professional Development programme, Imperial College, London, UK.

## Clubs and organizations

- Safety-Critical Systems Club (SCSC), UK. Enquiries should be sent to Mrs. J. Atkinson on csr@newcastle.ac.uk ( Centre for Software Reliability, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, Newcastle NE1 7RU, UK). The club organizes the annual Safety-critical Systems Symposium and produces a regular newsletter Safety Systems (Editor: Felix Redmill, 22 Onslow Gardens, London N10 3JU; tel & fax: +1-181-883-0789, no email!). See also BCS information.

- European Network of Clubs for REliability and Safety of Software (ENCRESS), sponsored by the ESSI Programme of the EC, including contacts. See information on meetings.

- European Safety and Reliability Association. General Secretariat: Apartado 1690, 1016 Lisboa Codex, Portugal. Chairman: D. Harvey, WS Atkins, Woodcote Grove, Ashley Road, Epsom, Surrey KT18 5BW, UK (tel +44-1372-726140 x4604, fax +44-1372-740055). Associated with the journal Reliability Engineering & System Safety.

- EWICS TC7 (European Workshop on Industrial Computer Systems, Technical Committee 7) on Reliability, Safety and Security. An ESRA Technical Committee since 1995. See safety aspects of distributed systems subgroup. Contact Robin Bloomfield on reb@dcs.ed.ac.uk for further information.

- Safety/Security Club, UK DTI-funded Safety Policy and Models (SPaM) project. Email John Elliott on jje@src1.demon.co.uk for further details.

No known on-line information is available from some of the above organizations. Pointers would be gratefully received.

See also the French National Institute for Transport and Safety Research (INRETS) in English and French.

## On-line publications

- Formal Methods in Safety-Critical Standards, Jonathan Bowen. In Proc. 1993 Software Engineering Standards Symposium (SESS'93), Brighton, UK, 30 August - 3 September 1993. IEEE Computer Society Press, pp 168-177, 1993.
- Safety-Critical Systems, Formal Methods and Standards, Jonathan Bowen and Victoria Stavridou. IEE/BCS Software Engineering Journal, 8(4):189-209, July 1993. Previously issued as a Programming Research Group Technical Report PRG-TR-5-92. A revised version is available as Chapter 1 in Towards Verified Systems. Winner of the IEE Charles Babbage Premium award, 1994.
- The Industrial Take-up of Formal Methods in Safety-Critical and Other Areas: A Perspective, Jonathan Bowen and Victoria Stavridou. In J.C.P. Woodcock and P.G. Larsen (eds.), FME'93: Industrial-Strength Formal Methods, First International Symposium of Formal Methods Europe, Odense, Denmark, 19-23 April 1993, Springer-Verlag, LNCS 670, pp 183-195, 1993.
- Formal Methods and Software Safety, Jonathan Bowen and Victoria Stavridou. In Heinz Frey (ed.), Safety of Computer Control Systems 1992 (SAFECOMP'92), Proc. IFAC Symposium, Zürich, Switzerland, 28-30 October 1992, Pergamon Press, pp 93-98, 1992.
- Formal Methods for the Specification and Design of Real-Time Safety Critical Systems, J. Ostroff. Journal of Systems and Software, 18(1):33-60, April 1992.
- Safety-Critical Software: Status Report and Annotated Bibliography, P. Place and K. Kang. Technical Report CMU/SEI-93-TR-5, Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, USA, 1993.
- Formal Specification and Verification for Critical Systems: Tools, Achievements and Prospects, John Rushby (SRI). In Electric Power Research Institute TR-100294, pp 9-1 to 9-14, January 1991.
- Formal Verification of Algorithms for Critical Systems, John Rushby (SRI). IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 19(1):113-233, January 1993.
- Formal Methods and the Certification of Critical Systems, John Rushby (SRI). SRI Technical Report CSL-93-7, December 1993. (300 pages) See also CSL-95-1.
- Formal Methods and their Role in the Certification of Critical Systems, John Rushby. SRI Technical Report CSL-95-1, March 1995.
  This is a shorter (50 pages) and less technical treatment of the material in CSL-93-7. It will become a chapter in the FAA Digital Systems Validation Handbook (a guide to assist FAA Certification Specialists with advanced technology issues).
- New Directions in Software Safety: Causal Modelling as an Aid to Integration, Peter Fenelon and John A McDermid. High Integrity Systems Engineering Group, Department of Computer Science, University of York, Heslington, York YO1 5DD, UK. See also other papers and reports by Pete Fenelon.
- Risk management is for everyone, Felix Redmill. IText 1(2), British Computer Society and Oxford University Press, 1995.
- The list of publications held at NASA Langley produced under NASA sponsorship since 1989 by various organizations, together with some on-line publications may be of interest. An overview of the NASA Langley programme with a good selection of references is available.
- Papers on safety-critical systems in computer science journals (authors/titles only) and technical reports (abstracts).
- Software Risk publication abstracts (searchable) from Research Access.
- DOD-STD-2167A Military Standard: Defense system software development.
- How numbers are tricking you by Arnold Barnett in the MIT Technology Review magazine.
- Safety-Critical Systems Computer Language Survey Results by Robin Rowe, posted on comp.software-eng, etc., November 1994.
- Computer-Related Risks, book by Peter G. Neumann, 1994.
- Fault Detection, Supervision and Safety for Technical Processes 1994, edited by Ruokonen, Pergamon, 1994.
- Fault Detection, Supervision and Safety for Technical Processes 1997, edited by Ruokonen, Pergamon, 1997. In preparation.
- Safety, Reliability and Applications of Emerging Intelligent Control Technologies, edited by Ng. and Hung, Pergamon, 1995.
- Publications on safety from a searchable catalogue by Elsevier.
- Safety Related Computer Controlled Systems Market Study by Coopers & Lybrand, HMSO, 1992.
- 00-55, 00-56 and other Defence Standards from the UK Minstry of Defence.
- How safe is your airline?, The Economist, 11-17 January 1997. Leader pages 13-14 and full story pages 55-56.

## Journals

- Control and Instrumentation, covers hardware and software for process engineering (much of which is safety critical). Editor: Brian Tinham, 30 Calderwood Street, London SE18 6QH, UK (tel: +44-181-855-7777, fax: 0181 316 3422). Assistant Editor: Jeremy Jones, email cz72@cityscape.co.uk.

- High Integrity Systems, launched in 1994 and published by Oxford University Press, is an excellent forum for papers on safety-critical systems. Editor: Prof. A.D. McGettrick, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Strathclyde, Livingstone Tower, 26 Richmond Street, Glasgow G1 1XH, UK, email adm@cs.strath.ac.uk. News, reviews and letters may be sent to: Dr. Phil A. Bennett, Director, Centre for Software Engineering Ltd., Belwin Drive, Flixborough, Scunthorpe DN15 8SN, UK (fax: +44-1724-846256, no email!).

- Reliability Engineering & System Safety from Elsevier Applied Science, Oxford, is edited by G.E. Apostolakis, School of Engineering and Applied Science, University of California, 38-137 Engineering IV, Los Angeles, California 90024-1597, USA (fax: +1--310-206-2302, no known email address).

- International Journal of Reliability, Quality and Safety Engineering from World Scientific.

- International Journal of Risk & Safety in Medicine from Elsevier, Amsterdam.

See also:

- Safety-related journals in the Directory of Computing Science Journals.

- Journals relevant to formal methods.

## Books

The following relevant books have on-line information:

- Safeware: System Safety and Computers, by Nancy G. Leveson, University of Washington (leveson@cs.washington.edu), Addison-Wesley, 1995. ISBN: 0-201-11972-2, $49.50. Order here.

- Computer Related Risks, by Peter G. Neumann, SRI, ACM Press Books ( ACM Press / Addison-Wesley), 1995. ISBN: 0-201-55805-X, $24.75. Order here.

- Software in Safety Related Systems, by Brian A. Wichmann, NPL, Wiley, 1992. ISBN: 0471-93474-7.

- Safety-Critical Computer Systems, by Neil Storey, Addison-Wesley, 1996. ISBN: 0-201-42787-7.

## Meetings

- COMPASS (Annual IEEE Conference on COMPuter ASSurance). See COMPASS '95 information.

- ENCRESS meetings (including the International Conference on Reliability, Quality & Safety of Software-Intensive Systems). See ENCRESS'97, Athens, Greece, 29-30 May 1997. Annual European ENCRESS club conference.

- PRFTS (Pacific Rim International Symposium on Fault-Tolerant Systems).

- SAFECOMP (Annual IFAC Symposium on SAFEty of COMPuter Control Systems). See SAFECOMP'97, York, UK, 8-10 September 1997.
  - SAFECOMP'89 proceedings.
  - SAFECOMP'90 proceedings.
  - SAFECOMP'91 proceedings.
  - SAFECOMP'92 proceedings.
  - SAFECOMP'93 proceedings.
  - SAFECOMP'94, the 13th International Conference on Computer Safety, Reliability and Security, Anaheim, California, USA, 23-26 October 1994. No known on-line information available.
  - SAFECOMP'95, the 14th International Conference on Computer Safety, Reliability and Security, Villa Carlotta, Belgirate, Italy, 11-13 October 1995.
  - SAFECOMP'96, the 15th international Conference on Computer Safety, Reliability and Security, Vienna, Austria, 23-25 October 1996.

- SAFEPROCESS'91 proceedings.

- SSS (Safety-critical Systems Symposium). See SSS'97, Brighton, UK, 4-6 February 1997. Annual UK Safety-Critical Systems Club symposium. Contact Joan.Atkinson@newcastle.ac.uk for further information.

- NASA/MOD AIS Security Conference.

This page is mentioned in:

> Safety-critical systems and the World Wide Web, by Jonathan Bowen. Safety Systems: The Safety-Critical Systems Club Newsletter, 4(2):16, January 1995.

Last updated by Jonathan Bowen, 11 February 1997.
Further information for possible inclusion is welcome.

Part of the OUCL archive.