Safety with

Imagination

Safety, as a whole, is crucial because it impacts both lives and reputations.

Electronic hardware and software plays an increasingly vital role in the development of safety-critical products, such as cars, airplanes, medical equipment, etc. Therefore, it’s essential that the products created are demonstrably safe, secure, and dependable to instil a level of trust, integrity, and quality both in the design and for the end-users. To ensure this, there are functional safety standards that developers must follow across various industries.

These standards are designed to minimise safety risk, which may include physical harm or threats to people’s wellbeing or their environment.  To address each risk, a safety control function is required, which is typically implemented through the application of a systematic development process, hazard identification, elimination and mitigation through the development of various passive and active safeguards.  This way, we can achieve the freedom of unacceptable risk.

Safety focused industries are required to adhere to specific safety standards. Some of these standards emphasise safe hardware or software development, while others focus on overall system safety.

Different industries have different standards but most are derived from, or influenced by, the de-facto standard IEC 61508 – which serves as a foundation safety standard for electrical, electronic and programmable electronic safety-related systems.  This standard has four Safety Integrity Levels (SILs 1–4).

ISO 26262 is the go-to safety standard for the automotive industry, developed on the back of IEC 61508, covering electronic systems in production vehicles.  Risk is managed through Automotive Safety Integrity Levels (ASILs A–D). More recently, this standard has been augmented by IEC 21448 to ensure Safety of the Intended Functionality (SOTIF) as well as IEC 21434 for automotive security.

Aerospace typically works to the established ARPs such as 4754 supported by the DO 254 and DO 178.  While the hazard and risk management models vary across all the different sectors, their objective is the same: to reduce risk and protect people.

All of these standards are critical for ensuring safety across various industries and play a key role in reducing risk and protecting lives.  Imagination employs best practice across all of these standards as part of our systematic development process for safety related hardware and software development.

The term “functionally safe” can only be applied to products which can demonstrate compliance with their expected sector standard.  This is made somewhat more straightforward through independent audits and assessments from industry approved certifying bodies and regulators.

A number of independent organisations, such as SGS-TÜV SAAR and HORIBA MIRA Certification Limited., can certify products in accordance with relevant industry standards.

It is generally an easier process to achieve certification for system development by ensuring the products used within it have followed the appropriate level of rigour, this also serves to ease integration risk and sustain the integrity of the system for the functions it delivers which are relevant to safety.