Certification of safety-critical systems

Legislatures and the public have decided that some applications of electronics and automation are so critical to the preservation of human life that regulatory agencies must monitor the designs carried out by engineers. Examples in the UK are the supervision of the design and operation of nuclear plant by the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate and the overview of safety in civil aviation provided by the Civil Aviation Authority. The paper considers the constraints that such certification procedures place on designers and software teams and relates these comments to the future use of IKBS in real-time applications