Politecnico di Torino Porto Institutional Repository [ Proceeding ] An Overview of Software - based Support Tools for ISO 26262

Safety in the automotive domain is becoming more and more important with the ever increasing level of complexity in emerging technologies built-in into the cars. As a stimulus for industry to refine its safety measures related to electrical, electronic and software systems in the cars, the ISO 26262 standard has been recently introduced. Developing safety-related systems according to this standard in an efficient and effective way requires adequate computer-aided support. For this reason, some initiatives towards software-based supporting tools for ISO 26262 were recently started. This paper gives an account of the main such initiatives after recalling the main features of the ISO 26262 standard. In particular, we briefly discuss how the main activities from ISO 26262 such as hazard analysis and risk assessment, functional safety concept, safety validation, etc can have a software support, and what is the state-of-the-art.