Safety assessment of system architectures

Emerging standards and guidelines in the safety engineering field call for the application of safety assessment techniques throughout the development cycle of systems. Since much early work on design projects falls within the discipline of systems engineering, questions arise about the applicability of safety assessment techniques to system architectural descriptions and about the role of such analyses. A safety assessment technique applicable to system architectures is proposed, based on the classic concept of interfaces and derived from the HAZOP techique widely used in the process industries. The role of the technique in the wider integration of safety and design processes is discussed. A prototype tool to support the analysis is described and a trial of its use in an industrial application is reported. A concluding discussion considers the integration of safety and design processes.