Safety markup language: Concept and application

Abstract

This paper proposes a method to expedite hypertext construction and improve document reading efficiency by using meaningful tags. Hazard Life Cycle is proposed as the common semantic framework for documents in safety engineering practice. Under this framework, we developed Safety Markup Language (SML) to annotate the major concepts in software-related nuclear regulation. A computer tool has been constructed to convert these SML tags into desired hyperlinks for review purpose. This approach reduces the manual effort in hyperlink construction, and supports information retrieval in a concept unit, which is closer to human cognition than that obtained from a conventional approach. Potential improvements achieved by this SML-based method include efficient checking of information completeness, tracing of review issues, and reduction of clerical work in license review.