Computers & Safety - COM00017M

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  • Department: Computer Science
  • Credit value: 10 credits
  • Credit level: M
  • Academic year of delivery: 2025-26

Module will run

Occurrence Teaching period
A Semester 2 2025-26

Module aims

This course is primarily intended to give system safety engineers an introduction to the issues that must be considered when computers are used in safety-critical or safety-related applications. The course starts with a rapid overview of how computer systems work, from basic hardware components up to application software. The emphasis throughout this introduction is on highlighting areas that are of potential concern to safety engineers. This introduction is followed by a more in-depth examination of the software development process, considering especially aspects of requirements specification, design and analysis that are critical to deployment of computers in safety-critical applications. The course also considers the structuring and collection of evidence for the software safety case.

Module learning outcomes

  • Demonstrate understanding of the principles of the contribution of computers and software to the safety characteristics of a system.

  • Describe and justify approaches to the safe design of software for safety related systems

  • Derive safety requirements on software elements of safety related systems

  • Explain approaches for assessment, verification and validation of the safety properties of software elements of a system.

  • Demonstrate how to provide a compelling software safety assurance case for a system.

Indicative assessment

Task % of module mark
Essay/coursework 100

Special assessment rules

None

Indicative reassessment

Task % of module mark
Essay/coursework 100

Module feedback

Individual written feedback is provided via the online feedback system. There will be general feedback on the answers I was expecting and individual feedback on how well you did for each question.

Indicative reading

** J. Knight, Fundamentals of Dependable Computing for Software Engineers, Chapman and Hall/CRC, 2012

** N. G. Leveson, Safeware, Addison-Wesley, 1995

** J. Barnes, High Integrity Software: SPARK approach, Addison-Wesley, 2006

* A. Burns & A. Wellings, Real-time systems and programming languages 4th Ed, Addison-Wesley, 2009