Support for Modular Certification of Safety-Critical Embedded Systems in DECOS – the Generic Safety Case*

The integrated EU-project DECOS (Dependable Embedded Components and Systems) aims at developing an integrated architecture for embedded systems to reduce life-cycle costs and to increase dependability of embedded applications. To facilitate the certification process of DECOS-based applications a modular approach has been implemented which is based on the usage of generic safety cases. This means concretely that an application safety case merely contains the application-specific issues and re-uses the safety arguments of the generic safety cases of the DECOS platform. The safety cases are based on validation-plans (v-plans) comprising the steps to validate the safety requirements and contain the evidence which prove that these requirements are fulfilled. The Generic Test Bench which has been developed in the realm of DECOS supports the overall validation and verification process and particularly provides guideline to generate the generic safety cases.