The safety management of data-driven safety-related systems

Many safety-related systems are built from generic software which is customised to work in a particular situation by static configuration data. Examples of such systems are railway interlockings and air traffic control systems. While there is now considerable experience and guidance on how to develop safety-related software, and there are a number of standards in this area, the topic of safety-related configuration data is hardly mentioned in the literature. This paper discusses the desirable properties of safety-related data and sets out principles for the safety management of such data, including a data lifecycle which is analogous to a software development lifecycle. Validation and verification of the data, and the means used to achieve such validation and verification are given particular attention.