SafeSpection - a systematic customization approach for software hazard identification

Software is an integral part of many technical systems and responsible for the realization of safety-critical features contained therein. Consequently, software has to be carefully considered in safety analysis efforts to ensure that it does not cause any system hazards. Safety engineering approaches borrowed from systems engineering, like Failure Mode and Effect Analysis, Fault Tree Analysis, or Hazard and Operability Studies, have been applied on software-intensive systems. However, in order to be successful, tailoring is needed to the characteristics of software and the concrete application context. Furthermore, due to the manual and expert-dependent nature of these techniques, the results are often not repeatable and address mainly syntactic issues. This paper presents the concepts of a customization framework to support the definition and implementation of project-specific software hazard identification approaches. The key-concepts of the approach, generic guide-phrases, and tailoring concepts to create objective, project-specific support to detect safety-weaknesses of software-intensive systems are introduced.