Multidirectional modular conditional safety certificates

Abstract

Over the last 20 years, embedded systems have evolved from closed, rather static single-application systems towards open, flexible, multi-application systems of systems. While this is a blessing from an application perspective, it certainly is a curse from a safety engineering perspective as it invalidates the base assumptions of established engineering methodologies. Due to the combinatorial complexity and the amount of uncertainty encountered in the analysis of such systems, we believe that more potent modular safety approaches coupled with adequate runtime checks are required. In this paper, we investigate the possibility of an integrated contract-based approach covering vertical dependencies (between platform and application) and horizontal dependencies (between applications) in order to efficiently assure the safety of the whole system of systems through modularization. We integrate both concepts using state-of-the-art research and showcase the application of the integrated approach based on a small industrial case study.