Certification of Safety-Critical Systems
Seeking new approaches toward ensuring the safety of software-intensive systems.
Nancy G. Leveson
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An Integrated Approach to Safety and Security Based on Systems Theory
Applying a more powerful new safety methodology to security risks.
Learning from the Past to Face the Risks of Today
The Space Shuttle software program can provide guidance to today's projects.
With software playing an undeniably critical role in our lives, one would expect that the best engineering techniques, such as rigorous specification and systematic inspections, would be applied routinely in its development. But in our experience, the opposite is often the case. Many large and important software development projects are conducted with poor choices of […]
Should Software Engineers Be Licensed?
Software is being used increasingly in systems that affect public safety and where software errors might lead to unacceptable losses. This use has led to suggestions that software engineers working on safety-critical systems should be licensed as Professional Engineers (PEs) in order to protect the public interest. To determine whether the ACM should support such […]
When computers are used to control potentially dangerous devices, new issues and concerns are raised for software engineering. Simply focusing on building software that matches its specifications is not enough. Accidents occur even when the individual system components are highly reliable and have not “failed.” That is, accidents in complex systems often arise in the interactions among the system components, each one operating according to its specified behavior but together creating a hazardous system state.
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