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An Industrial Survey of Safety Evidence Change Impact Analysis Practice

de la Vara, José Luis ; BORG, MARKUS LU ; Wnuk, Krzysztof LU and Moonen, Leon (2016) In IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering 42(12). p.1095-1117
Abstract
In many application domains, critical systems must comply with safety standards. This involves gathering safety evidence in the form of artefacts such as safety analyses, system specifications, and testing results. These artefacts can evolve during a system's lifecycle, creating a need for impact analysis to guarantee that system safety and compliance are not jeopardised. Although extensive research has been conducted on change impact analysis and on safety evidence management, the knowledge about how safety evidence change impact analysis is addressed in practice is limited. This paper reports on a survey targeted at filling this gap by analysing the circumstances under which safety evidence change impact analysis is addressed, the tool... (More)
In many application domains, critical systems must comply with safety standards. This involves gathering safety evidence in the form of artefacts such as safety analyses, system specifications, and testing results. These artefacts can evolve during a system's lifecycle, creating a need for impact analysis to guarantee that system safety and compliance are not jeopardised. Although extensive research has been conducted on change impact analysis and on safety evidence management, the knowledge about how safety evidence change impact analysis is addressed in practice is limited. This paper reports on a survey targeted at filling this gap by analysing the circumstances under which safety evidence change impact analysis is addressed, the tool support used, and the challenges faced. We obtained 97 valid responses representing 16 application domains, 28 countries, and 47 safety standards. The results suggest that most practitioners deal with safety evidence change impact analysis during system development and mainly from system specifications. Furthermore, the level of automation in the process is low and insufficient tool support is the most frequent challenge. Other notable findings include that the different artefact types used as safety evidence seem to co-evolve, the evolution of safety case should probably be better managed, and no commercial impact analysis tool has been reported as used for all artefact types. Finally, we identified over 20 areas where the state of the practice in safety evidence change impact analysis can be improved. (Less)
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author
; ; and
organization
publishing date
type
Contribution to journal
publication status
published
subject
in
IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering
volume
42
issue
12
pages
23 pages
publisher
IEEE - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
external identifiers
  • scopus:85006783309
ISSN
0098-5589
DOI
10.1109/TSE.2016.2553032
language
English
LU publication?
yes
id
acee44cc-b3de-4737-889c-c9d9ad30846f
date added to LUP
2016-04-10 10:54:44
date last changed
2022-03-08 17:37:51
@article{acee44cc-b3de-4737-889c-c9d9ad30846f,
  abstract     = {{In many application domains, critical systems must comply with safety standards. This involves gathering safety evidence in the form of artefacts such as safety analyses, system specifications, and testing results. These artefacts can evolve during a system's lifecycle, creating a need for impact analysis to guarantee that system safety and compliance are not jeopardised. Although extensive research has been conducted on change impact analysis and on safety evidence management, the knowledge about how safety evidence change impact analysis is addressed in practice is limited. This paper reports on a survey targeted at filling this gap by analysing the circumstances under which safety evidence change impact analysis is addressed, the tool support used, and the challenges faced. We obtained 97 valid responses representing 16 application domains, 28 countries, and 47 safety standards. The results suggest that most practitioners deal with safety evidence change impact analysis during system development and mainly from system specifications. Furthermore, the level of automation in the process is low and insufficient tool support is the most frequent challenge. Other notable findings include that the different artefact types used as safety evidence seem to co-evolve, the evolution of safety case should probably be better managed, and no commercial impact analysis tool has been reported as used for all artefact types. Finally, we identified over 20 areas where the state of the practice in safety evidence change impact analysis can be improved.}},
  author       = {{de la Vara, José Luis and BORG, MARKUS and Wnuk, Krzysztof and Moonen, Leon}},
  issn         = {{0098-5589}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  month        = {{12}},
  number       = {{12}},
  pages        = {{1095--1117}},
  publisher    = {{IEEE - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.}},
  series       = {{IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering}},
  title        = {{An Industrial Survey of Safety Evidence Change Impact Analysis Practice}},
  url          = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TSE.2016.2553032}},
  doi          = {{10.1109/TSE.2016.2553032}},
  volume       = {{42}},
  year         = {{2016}},
}