The potential for a generic approach to certification of safety critical systems in the transportation sector

This paper investigates the potential for common treatment of certification of safety critical programmable electronic systems in the transportation industries. It contains a comparative review of new, emerging international standards that are likely to influence certification procedures in the railway, automotive and aerospace sectors in the future. These include the EUROCAE/SAE aerospace guidelines, the CENELEC railway standards and IEC-61508, the draft international standard on safety related systems. The review identifies the common and divergent requirements for certification among these standards. Based on significant commonalities, we have developed a common process model for the development, assessment and certification of safety critical programmable electronic systems which could be acceptable in the framework of each standard in consideration. The proposed model contains a system development and a safety assessment process which rationalises and unifies the common requirements among the standards in these areas. In addition, it defines a common evolutionary process for the development of the systemʹs safety case. The safety case process determines how the evidence produced in the progression of safety assessment can be structured in order to form an overall convincing argument about the safety of the system. We conclude that it is possible to use this model as the basis of a generic method for the certification of systems across the transportation sector and outline a suitable approach to such certification.