Safety-critical systems, by definition those systems whose failure can cause catastrophic results for people, the environment, and the economy, are becoming increasingly complex both in their functionality and their interactions with the environment. Unfortunately, safety assessments are still largely done manually, a time-consuming and error-prone process. The growing complexity of these systems requires an increase in the skill and efficacy of safety engineers and encourages the adoption of formal and standardized techniques.

An introduction to the area of design and verification of safety-critical systems, Design and Safety Assessment of Critical Systems focuses on safety assessment using formal methods. Beginning with an introduction to the fundamental concepts of safety and reliability, it illustrates the pivotal issues of design, development, and safety assessment of critical systems.

The core of the book covers traditional notations, techniques, and procedures, including Fault Tree Analysis, FMECA, HAZOP, and Event Tree Analysis, and explains in detail how formal methods can be used to realize such procedures. It looks at the development process of safety-critical systems, and highlights influential management and organizational aspects. Finally, it describes verification and validation techniques and new trends in formal methods for safety and concludes with some widely adopted standards for the certification of safety-critical systems.

Providing an in-depth and hands-on view of the application of formal techniques to advanced and critical safety assessments in a variety of industrial sectors, such as transportation, avionics and aerospace, and nuclear power, Design and Safety Assessment of Critical Systems allows anyone with a basic background in mathematics or computer science to move confidently into this advanced arena of safety assessment.