Reducing Risk in Safety Critical Systems through Early Safety Case Development and Dialectic Arguments 3S Knowledge

Format:

Book

Conference/Event

Author/Creator:

Kumar, Amrendra, author.

Contributor:

Bagalwadi, Saurabh

McMurran, Ross

Conference Name:

Symposium on International Automotive Technology (2026) (2026-01-28 : Pune, India)

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource cm

Place of Publication:

Warrendale, PA SAE International 2026

Summary:

The rapid evolution of modern automotive systemspowered by advancements in autonomous driving and connected vehicle technologies pose fundamental challenges to design and integration. A specific challenge of these highly interconnected, software-driven systems is in ensuring their safety while avoiding spiralling costs and development times. This challenge calls for a more structured and rigorous approach to safety assurance than traditional methods.Traditional safety cases tend to take a linear, justification-focused approach that mainly focuses on positive assertions compliance to safety while giving limited attention to potential weaknesses, or gaps in supporting evidence. This practice may lead to criticism that such arguments are "too positive," portraying an overly biased or optimistic view of system safety without sufficiently acknowledging areas of unresolved risk. As a result, conventional approaches for developing a safety case may overlook complex interactions, assumptions, and uncertainties that require critical examination, not default acceptance.As opposed to traditional methods of developing safety cases through justification, the dialectic approach emphasizes critical analysis and scrutiny of weak points using open challenges, counterarguments, and alternative perspectives. It encourages a deliberate effort to explore not just what works in a design, but what might fail anticipating negative aspects, design vulnerabilities, and areas where safety assumptions may fail. Rather than simply validating assumptions, it aims to uncover hidden flaws, inconsistencies, and evidence gaps that could compromise system safety. Constructing a safety case early in a project, and allowing constructive criticism through dialectic argument, transforms the safety case into a living, questioning tool that evolves with improving system understandingbecoming increasingly transparent, robust, and credible.In the paper, we demonstrate 3SK's practical application of a dialectic methodology for developing safety cases. By this approach, we were able to pick out important safety gaps that would otherwise have gone unnoticed, hence enhancing the completeness, credibility, and robustness of our safety assurance practices

Notes:

Vendor supplied data

Publisher Number:

2026-26-0044

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license