A UML profile for developing airworthiness-compliant (RTCA DO-178B), safety-critical software

Gregory Zoughbi, Lionel Briand, Yvan Labiche

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

Abstract

Many safety-related, certification standards exist for developing safety-critical systems. System safety assessments are common practice and system certification according to a standard requires submitting relevant software safety information to appropriate authorities. The airworthiness standard, RTCA DO-178B, is the de-facto standard for certifying aerospace systems containing software. This research introduces an approach to improve communication and collaboration among safety engineers and software engineers by proposing a Unified Modeling Language (UML) profile that allows software engineers to model safety-related concepts and properties in UML, the de-facto software modeling language. Key safety-related concepts are extracted from RTCA DO-178B, and then a UML profile is defined to enable their precise modeling. We show that the profile improves the line of communication between safety engineers and software engineers, for instance by allowing the automated generation of certification-related information from UML models. This is illustrated through a case study on developing an aircraft's navigation controller subsystem.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationModel Driven Engineering Languages and Systems - 10th International Conference, MODELS 2007, Proceedings
PublisherSpringer Verlag
Pages574-588
Number of pages15
ISBN (Print)9783540752080
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2007
Externally publishedYes
Event10th International Conference on Model Driven Engineering Languages and Systems, MODELS 2007 - Nashville, TN, United States
Duration: 30 Sep 20075 Oct 2007

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume4735 LNCS
ISSN (Print)0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349

Conference

Conference10th International Conference on Model Driven Engineering Languages and Systems, MODELS 2007
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityNashville, TN
Period30/09/075/10/07

Keywords

  • Airworthiness
  • Certification
  • Certification authority
  • RTCA DO-178B
  • Safety
  • Safety assessment
  • Safety-critical
  • UML
  • UML profile

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