Abstract
Purpose: The purpose of this study is to propose an Integrated Safety Evaluation Process (ISEP) that can enhances the safety aspect of the safety-critical system. This process utilizes the advantages of the iterative Systems Engineering process combined with the safety assessment process that is commonly and well defined in many standards and/or guidelines for railway, aerospace, and other safety-critical systems. Methods: The proposed process model is based on the predefined system lifecycle, in each phase of which the appropriate safety assessment activities and the safety data are identified. The interfaces between Systems Engineering process and the safety assessment process are identified before the two processes are integrated. For the integration, the elements at lower level of Systems Engineering process are combined with the relevant elements of safety assessment process. This combined process model is represented as Enhanced Functional Flow Block Diagram (EFFBD) by using CORE(R) that is commercial modelling tool. Results: The proposed model is applied to the lifecycle and management process of the United States aircraft system. The US aircraft systems engineering process are composed of twelve key elements, among which the requirements management, functional analysis, and Synthesis processes are considered for examplenary application of the proposed process. To synchronize the Systems Engineering process and the safety assessment process, the Systems Engineering milestones are utilized, where the US aircraft system has thirteen milestones. Taking into account of the nine steps in the maturity level, the integrated process models are proposed in some phases of lifecycle. The flows of processes are simulated using CORE(R), confirming the flows are timelined without any conflict between the Systems Engineering process and the safety assessment process. Conclusion: ISEP allows the timeline analysis for identifying activity and data flows. Also, the use of CORE(R) is shown to be effective in the management and change of process data, which helps for the ISEP to apply for the development of safety critical system. In this study, only the first few phases of lifecyle are considered, however, the implementation through operation phases can be revised by combining the elements of safety activities regarding those phases.
