Müller, J. R.; Schnieder, E.:
Supporting the Safety Management – Automated Safety Case Processes.
In: European Safety and Reliability Association, Hrsg.: ESREL 2010 - European Safety & Reliability Conference , Rhodos, September 2010.
The European project called „INESS – Integrated European Signalling System“ aims at defining and developing specifications for a new generation of interoperable interlocking systems suitable to be integrated in ERTMS systems, with the objective of making the migration to ERTMS more cost-effective. The Technical University of Braunschweig is leader of the part of INESS that deals with the safety case process. The aim of this essential subproject is to reduce time and money for the development of the safety case in industry, i.e. operators as well as suppliers, by avoiding unnecessary or redundant procedures. In this workstream a dozen European partners have contributed to the results. The aim of the paper is as follows: After having introduced the context of the INESS project, the concept of safety cases in general and the corresponding processes in the railway domain are discussed. Based on the experiences of the project partners, ways to support the safety case writer in industry are to be identified. E.g. the explicit distinction between “safey argumentation” and “safety evidence” improves not only the discussions with the safety authorities, but also leads to better understanding of the process of “ordinary” project memebers. Therefore, this approach is discussed in detail. The implementation of the identified support strategies with the help of workflow- and document management tools presupposes the translation of the processes given in natural language in the CENELEC 5012x norms: These processes have been translated to a (semi-)formal EPC model (event driven process chains) representing the normative safety case process. This formal model has then been augmented by “supporting processes” that refer to “supporting knowledge” stored in appropriate databases. After having described the implementation of generic workflows, the estimated economical benefit expected by the project partners is described.