Safety and functionality assessment of railway applications in terms of software

Abstract

The safety and functionality assessment is an integral part of development of every device. For majority of products particular European standards already exist (EN standards), but the safety assessment of the railway applications in terms of software is described without sufficient details. The issue of software for railway applications is described in the standard EN 50128:2001, which is focused only on the phases of software life-cycle, on the inputs and outputs of different phases of the life-cycle and on the software documentation with regard to the software safety integrity level SIL 1 to 4. In this paper authors deal with the safety of railway applications with regard to the functionality of software. The main part of this article is devoted to the description of methodology for revealing potential dangerous situations in the equipment, which can be subsequently subjected to testing and to a practical example of the described methodology usage. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.