Functional Hazard Analysis for Engineering Safe Software Requirements

Abstract

Functional Hazard Analysis (FHA) is an inductive hazard analysis method used to evaluate the potential causes and hazardous consequences of a system's functional failures. Software safety uses the FHA to assess the software contribution to the system hazards and identify software improvement opportunities. The FHA integrates risk-driven and quality assurance-driven approaches into a single safety analysis method for safe software requirements engineering. Our paper reviews the use of the MIL-STD-882E FHA to support the development of software requirements for safety-critical systems. First, we summarize the distinguishing features of the FHA as a hazard analysis method. Second, we explain how to use this method to identify software safety risks and recommend software safety improvements in the software requirements engineering process.