Rethinking of strategy for safety argument development

Abstract

A 'strategy' in Goal Structuring Notation (GSN) aims to help safety-case developers and reviewers to understand the inferences in a hierarchy of safety claims. However, the identification and elaboration of 'strategies' in argument development is not always straightforward in practice. In this paper, we revisit the role of strategies in the development of safety cases and examine the application of strategies in some existing argument structures. Four main sources of information are identified as the basis of strategy formulation. A list of generic strategy types for argument decomposition and refinement are analysed in order to facilitate the safety case development and review processes for assuring system safety. © 2014 Springer International Publishing.