Architecture Framework for Software Safety

Currently, an increasing number of systems are controlled by software and rely on the correct operation of software. In this context, a safety-critical system is defined as a system in which malfunctioning software could result in death, injury or damage to environment. To mitigate these serious risks, the architecture of safety-critical systems needs to be carefully designed and analyzed. A common practice for modeling software architecture is the adoption of software architecture viewpoints to model the architecture for particular stakeholders and concerns. Existing architecture viewpoints tend to be general purpose and do not explicitly focus on safety concerns in particular. To provide a complementary and dedicated support for designing safety critical systems, we propose an architecture framework for software safety. The architecture framework is based on a metamodel that has been developed after a thorough domain analysis. The framework includes three coherent viewpoints, each of which addressing an important concern. The application of the viewpoints is illustrated for an industrial case of safety-critical avionics control computer system.