Abstract
It is becoming more and more important to develop safety-critical systems with special attention. Examples of the safety-critical systems include the mass transportation systems such as high speed trains, airplanes, ships and so forth. Safety critical issues can also exist in the development of atomic power plants that are attracting a great deal of attention recently as oil prices are sky-rocketing. Note that the safety-critical systems are in general large-scale and very complex for which case the effects of adopting the systems engineering (SE) approach has been quite phenomenal. Furthermore, safety-critical requirements should necessarily be realized in the design phase and be effectively maintained thereafter. In light of these comments, we have considered our approach to developing safety-critical systems to be based on the method combining the systems engineering and safety management processes. To do so, we have developed a design environment by constructing a whole life cycle model in two steps. In the first step, the integrated process model was developed by integrating the SE (ISO/IEC 15283) and systems safety (e.g., hazard analysis) activities and implemented in a computer-aided SE tool environment. The model was represented by three hierarchical levels: the life-cycle level, the process level, and the activity level. As a result, one can see from the model when and how the required SE and safety processes have to be carried out concurrently and iterately. Finally, the design environment was verified by the computer simulation.
