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Two Decades of Assurance Case Tools: A Survey

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Computer Safety, Reliability, and Security (SAFECOMP 2018)

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Abstract

In regulated safety-critical domains, such as the aerospace and nuclear domains, certification bodies often require systems to undergo a stringent safety assessment procedure to show their compliance to one or more safety standards. Assurance cases are an emerging way of communicating safety of a safety-critical system in a structured and comprehensive manner. Due to the significant complexity of the required materials, software tools are often used as a practical way of constructing assurance cases. This paper presents the first, to the best of our knowledge, systematic review of assurance case tools. Specifically, we provide a comprehensive list of assurance case tools developed over the past 20 years and an analysis of their functionalities.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The literature search was conducted in the dates between 02.02.2018 - 19.02.2018.

  2. 2.

    Carried out on 25.02.2018.

  3. 3.

    A table listing more information about each evaluated tool, such as where it was produced, how it was discovered, a link to the tool, its availability, its supported notations and domain, can be accessed at goo.gl/A4yWs9.

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Acknowledgements

The work reported in this paper has been funded by General Motors and NSERC Canada. The authors thank Mark Lawford, Alan Wassyng and Tom Maibaum for many useful discussions about assurance cases.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada

    Mike Maksimov, Nick L. S. Fung & Marsha Chechik

  2. McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada

    Sahar Kokaly

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Correspondence to Mike Maksimov .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Mälardalen University, Västerås, Sweden

    Barbara Gallina

  2. Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway

    Amund Skavhaug

  3. AIT Austrian Institute of Technology, Vienna, Austria

    Erwin Schoitsch

  4. Thales Deutschland GmbH, Ditzingen, Germany

    Friedemann Bitsch

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Maksimov, M., Fung, N.L.S., Kokaly, S., Chechik, M. (2018). Two Decades of Assurance Case Tools: A Survey. In: Gallina, B., Skavhaug, A., Schoitsch, E., Bitsch, F. (eds) Computer Safety, Reliability, and Security. SAFECOMP 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11094. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99229-7_6

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