An analysis of safety evidence management with the Structured Assurance Case Metamodel Articles uri icon

publication date

  • February 2017

start page

  • 179

end page

  • 198

volume

  • 50

International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)

  • 0920-5489

Electronic International Standard Serial Number (EISSN)

  • 1872-7018

abstract

  • SACM (Structured Assurance Case Metamodel) it a standard for assurance case specification and exchange. It consists of an argumentation metamodel and an evidence metamodel for justifying that a system satisfies certain requirements. For assurance of safety-critical systems, SACM can be used to manage safety evidence and to specify safety cases. The standard is a promising initiative towards harmonizing and improving system assurance practices, but its suitability for safety evidence management needs to be further studied. To this end, this paper studies how SACM 1.1 supports this activity according to requirements from industry and from prior work. We have analysed the notion of evidence in SACM, its evidence lifecycle, the classes and associations of the evidence metamodel, and the link of this metamodel with the argumentation one. As a result, we have identified several improvement opportunities and extension possibilities in SACM.

subjects

  • Computer Science

keywords

  • sacm; structured assurance case metamodel; safety evidence; evidence management; safety assurance; safety certification; certification; software; model; requirements; traceability; standards; systems