Two decades of assurance case tools: A survey

Abstract

In regulated safety-critical domains, such as the aerospace and nuclear domains, certification bodies often require systems to undergo a stringent safety assessment procedure to show their compliance to one or more safety standards. Assurance cases are an emerging way of communicating safety of a safety-critical system in a structured and comprehensive manner. Due to the significant complexity of the required materials, software tools are often used as a practical way of constructing assurance cases. This paper presents the first, to the best of our knowledge, systematic review of assurance case tools. Specifically, we provide a comprehensive list of assurance case tools developed over the past 20 years and an analysis of their functionalities.