The New Face of System Safety

The continuing and growing need for first-time safe systems will require system safety efforts for more and more products and services, in government and in private industry. These efforts must include 

As an overview of software system safety, the following is provided from the website of the U.S. Army Communications-Electronics Command (www.monmouth.army.mil/cencom/safety/main.htm). Software system safety optimizes system safety in the design, development, use, and maintenance of software systems and their integration with safety critical hardware systems in an operational environment.  

Software system safety is an element of the total safety and software development program. Software cannot be allowed to function independently of the total effort. 

Tolerate the Hazard. The design needs to be fault tolerant. That means, in the presence of a hardware/software fault, the software still provides continuous correct execution. Consider hazard conditions to software logic created by equipment wear and tear, or unexpected failures. Consider alternate approaches to minimize risk from hazards that cannot be eliminated. Such approaches include interlocks, redundancy, fail-safe design, system protection, and procedures. 

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As we progress into the new century there are both opportunities and challenges. Qpportunities present themselves in the form of (1) the potential of integrating system software safety with control engineering to more closely achieve a level of intrinsic safety and (2) the proliferation of system safety as a discipline in other parts of the world. The challenges we face include the... 

Writers admittedly faced problems of public perception when they constructed the agency s official version of the disaster. The accident was the first fatal accident since British mines had denationalized in 1994. It was also the first disaster since British mines had introduced the American system of rock bolting, a method of roof support opposed by British labor unions who favored the traditional method of arch support. Unions had feared that the new system would reduce safety and increase the potential for disaster. The accident confirmed their fears that the motivation for the practice was strictly economic. 

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