8th IET International System Safety Conference incorporating the Cyber Security Conference 2013

Registration

AM tutorials

• An Introduction to System Safety, Dr Carl Sandom CEng FIET MIEHF, Chairman IET System Safety 2013
• Human factors
• Safety management

PM tutorials

An Introduction to cyber security

Mike StJohn-Green CEng FIET, Independent Cyber Security Consultant

Deriving functional safety requirements for safety-related systems

International functional-safety standard IEC 61508 uses the term safety-related to identify a class of (control and/or protection) systems whose primary purpose is to reduce the risks associated a host system – the so-called equipment under control (EUC). It is clear that this necessary risk reduction depends entirely on the functionality / performance of the safety related system (SRS) and yet little guidance on this relationship is given in the standard.  The same is true of some industry-specific standards – eg the CENELC series of European railway standards and the EUROCONTROL air traffic management (ATM) Safety Assessment Methodology – which, like IEC 61508, devote most of their content to analysis of potential failures of SRSs. The same is not true, however, of the international standards covering the certification of large commercial jet aircraft.

The tutorial will start by examining how this situation has arisen, why it might not have been a problem historically, why it is now becoming a problem on systems employing new operational concepts enabled by rapid advances in technology, and how it could lead to illogical conclusions in a system safety case.  It will then use a mixture of presentation material, examples and exercises to show how conventional systems-engineering techniques can be adapted to derive appropriately-rigorous Functional Safety Requirements to ensure that SRSs for a variety of applications (rail, aviation, ATM and automotive) will be adequately safe when they are working as intended (i.e. in the absence of failure) rather than just “not unsafe” in the event of failure.

Derek Fowler CEng, FIET, Independent Safety Consultant, JDF Consultancy LLP

System safety assurance

This tutorial will introduce and explain the general notion of assurance as applied to products and processes, and cover methods and tools that are designed to provide assurance of safety to a third party. These techniques include high assurance ones such as formal methods (formal specification, modelling and verification) and also semi-formal or lightweight techniques such as structured system documentation  and flow analysis. The tutorial will discuss the kinds of assurance that are required by safety standards such as MIL STD 882E, DefStan 00-56, the CENELEC standards EN 50126, DO-178B/C and DEF(AUST)5679.

Tony Cant, Former DSTO

IET Safety Community annual open meeting

Safety Community annual open meeting

Short presentations ‘new developments in the safety community’

Safety Community Steering Group members

Invitation to join the Safety Community Steering Group in the bar