Contact Name: Prof. Andrea Tilli
About the speaker
With a degree in Nuclear Engineering (2002) and a PhD in Energy, Nuclear and Environmental Control Engineering (2006) from the University of Bologna, Viviana Scot joined NIER Ingegneria in 2015. Thanks to her research experience in the nuclear systems domain, she was able to develop competences in software development and modelling for safety related applications. In NIER she is now in charge of the Software Engineering Unit, coordinating a team of about 15 people and managing multinational clients.
NIER Ingegneria (http://www.niering.it/en) is an engineering consulting company, founded in 1977, with headquarter in Bologna, and offices in Milano and Napoli. The main activities are in the Systems Engineering and HSE (Health Safety, Environment and Energy) domains. NIER is involved in research projects, supported by national or European funding schemes.
Abstract
Safety-critical systems are those systems whose failure could result in very significant damage, such as loss of life, property damage, or damage to the environment. Well-known examples are medical devices, transport systems, nuclear systems. Also modern information systems are becoming “safety-critical” because financial loss and even loss of life can result from their failure. The final deployment of the software in those kind of systems requires many specific actions, defined by detailed procedures and by specific regulations, customized for the different application areas.
In the present seminar, after an overview on the main regulations (EN 5012x for railway systems, ISO26262 for automotive, IEC 62304 for medical devices, etc ), the concepts of Verification and Validation (V&V) will be introduced and the software development lifecycle for safety critical applications will be presented. The main activities of the V&V will be outlined, with a focus on the aims of the different phases of the so-called V model: the project definition (in the descending part), the sw implementation (bottom of the cycle) and the software testing and integration (ascending part), to the final goal of an in-service system. Specific examples and real cases in the railway domain will be presented and analysed. Difficulties/challenges and the strategies applied to overcome them will be discussed.