Resources
Software-Related Accidents and Disasters
Software functionality has been directly involved in serious accidents and disasters, including:
- Massive radiation overdose of six people between June 1985 and January 1987 by a computer-controlled medical device called Therac-25 (PDF: 292KB)
- Mid-air collision of two aircraft over the German village of Ueberlingen on July 1, 2001 (PDF: 3.5MB)
- An electric power blackout in the northeastern U.S. and Ontario on August 14, 2003 affecting an estimated 50 million people (PDF: 6.7MB)
- Explosion of the European Space Agency Ariane 5 rocket launcher on June 4, 1996
Safety related standards: click here
Conference Papers that we recommend:
- A. L. Juarez-Dominguez, J. J. Joyce and R. Debouk, Feature Interaction as a Source of Risk in Complex Software-intensive Systems, 25th International System Safety Conference, Baltimore, 13-17 August 2007.
CSL presentations (coming soon!)
Listen to our Podcast on Critical Systems:
Testing Safety-Critical Systems with Jeff Joyce
Safety links to community websites
Software System Safety Working Group
http://sunnyday.mit.edu/safety-club/
Safety critical systems links:
http://archive.comlab.ox.ac.uk/safety.html
A Framework for the Development and Assurance of High Integrity Software
http://hissa.ncsl.nist.gov/publications/sp223/
System Safety society
Safety links to University Websites
Safety Critical Mailing list
http://www.cs.york.ac.uk/hise/sc_list.php
Books we recommend:
- “Safeware : System Safety and Computers”, Nancy Leveson, April 1995
- “Managing the risks of Organisational Accidents”, James Reason, 1997
- “The Rational Unified Process: An Introduction”, Philippe Kruchten, March 2000
Other useful references and links:
“Fault Tree Handbook within aerospace applications”, NASA office of Safety and Mission Assurance, August 2002
Object Oriented Technology in Aviation http://www.faa.gov/aircraft/air_cert/design_approvals/air_software/oot/