Computer System Safety Argument Schemes

Abstract

Safety arguments are key components in a safety case. Too often, safety arguments are constructed without proper reasoning., Inappropriate reasoning in a system’s safety argument could undermine the system’s safety claims, which in turn contributes to a safety-related failure of the system. To address this, we argue that informal logic argument schemes have important roles to play in safety argument construction process. Several reasoning schemes in computer system safety domain are proposed against the safety engineering literature. It is anticipated that this work will contribute toward the development of computer system safety arguments.