Safeware: system safety and computers
Safeware: system safety and computers
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The field of system safety looks on the surface to be a mature discipline based on everyday intuitions about safety risk. System safety looks at potential accidents that could arise due to system behaviour. It is based on the notion of system hazard. In this paper, we look at the theory and practice of system safety. We propose a model of system safety behaviour suitable for describing and evauating the goals and processes of safety engineering. We argue that the notion of hazard is not appropriate as the central pillar of safety engineering and that it can actually be misleading. Instead, we propose that safety engineering is better served by a focus on safety constraints. To illustrate the benefits, we consider an approach to "hazard analysis" that begins by simply identifying all the dangerous physical flows in the systems intended environment and proposing a safety policy for managing them. Safety engineering then proceeds with the elucidation of safety protocols that coordinate the various systems in the environment in operating safely within the proposed policy constraints. We illustrate our approach using a case study.