safeTbox: Tool for the development & certification of safety-critical systems

How can functional safety be guaranteed during development?

When developing safety-critical systems, it is essential to guarantee functional safety. For this purpose, various analyses and development artifacts must be created in accordance with the specifications of relevant standards (e.g. IEC 61508, EN 50128, ISO 26262, ISO 25119, ISO 13849). From a tool perspective, this is currently primarily carried out using document processing and spreadsheet tools such as Word and Excel. However, as the complexity of the systems continues to increase, this is reaching its limits, meaning that important properties such as maintainability, traceability and traceability can no longer be guaranteed. Ultimately, this results in problems in terms of efficiency and quality, which at best only costs money and at worst human lives.

safeTbox helps to reduce risks and costs

Techniques and methods of model-based systems and safety engineering paired with adequate tool support provide a remedy. Our safeTbox tool seamlessly integrates the usual activities required as part of systematic safety engineering, such as hazard analysis and risk assessment, safety analysis, the creation of a safety concept and the synthesis of a safety case, with systems engineering techniques.

For example, safeTbox offers a modeling technique for specifying the system architecture, which allows fault models to be assigned directly to system artefacts, thus ensuring traceability and traceability in this respect.

Graphic  safeTbox - Architecture Design, Fraunhofer IESE
© Fraunhofer IESE
Graphic safeTbox - Architecture Design
Grafik safeTbox - Fault Analysis, Fraunhofer IESE
© Fraunhofer IESE
Graphic safeTbox - Fault Analysis

In addition to linking error models and architecture, safeTbox allows you to create dynamic links between all development artifacts. These links make it easy to find referenced elements as well as to navigate to them.

The modelling techniques integrated in safeTbox were developed without exception according to the concept of modularization (e.g. component fault trees (CFTs), system components and functions, safety concepts) in order to support the simple exchange of components and thus increase the maintainability of the developed systems and enable the efficient reuse of components or subsystems in new projects.

Graphic safeTbox - Hazard Analysis, Fraunhofer IESE
© Fraunhofer IESE
Graphic safeTbox - Hazard Analysis
Graphic safeTbox: Safety Argumentation, Fraunhofer IESE
© Fraunhofer IESE
Graphic safeTbox: Safety Argumentation

In addition, safeTbox offers a range of features to improve user-friendliness and partial automation. In addition to simplified navigation through element structures, safeTbox also supports the user with consistency checks in relation to element interfaces, the option to edit and export model elements in tabular form and compatibility between projects of different safeTbox versions.

Selected projects for safeTbox

 

CrEST

In the CrESt research project, Fraunhofer IESE focused on using a comprehensive methodology to make the development of highly automated collaborative systems manageable.

Free trial license for safeTbox

safeTbox is an extension of the commercial modeling tool Enterprise Architect (EA). Accordingly, EA must be installed to use safeTbox. However, all the features offered by EA are also available. Further information and a sample EA project can be found on the official safeTbox website, where a free trial license can also be obtained.