Report on Identify five consumer products that are likely to be controlled by safety-critical software systems. Justify your selection.

Possible domestic appliances that may include safety-critical software include:

§  Medical Devices

§  Military weapons

§  Nuclear system

§  Aircraft System

§  Traffic control System

The safety-critical software systems are used in the medical devices which are very powerful, effective, useful as well as valuable devices. Some critical safety systems in the medical field such as the ECG machine for the heart patients to check their heartbeat rate as well as check the health of heart. But sometimes this machine can also face some problems due to any kind of issue and failure in the machine. The failure in the system can cause any critical damage to patient or loss of the life of the patient.

The military weapons, such as the radar system is used by military for taking a look at the territories and borders of the country. The systems are majorly and commonly used to find any suspicious entries in the country which can be dangerous for the country. Furthermore, the safety-critical software systems are also used in the drones for watching the activities in the specific areas which are selected as well as targeted by military IT teams. In case of any kind of failure or arising any kind of issues in the system may cause very heavy damage in the country and can cause for possession in the area of any other country’s military or the heavy loss in that area. These devices are very helpful in stopping the external forces from entering the territories of the country. On the other side, the critical safety systems are using currently in military weapons such as guns, sniper rifles as well as the guns. These weapons are completely controlled by the technology by sitting in the headquarters of the military base, and the operator of this system can fire or target any area from the offices or the headquarters after getting orders of the military heads. But sometimes in case of any kind of issue or failure, the whole system will be failed. The whole security system may be failed due to the failure in the system software or the hardware or in the architecture of the system as well as due to this issue, and the results will be unbearable for the military and nation (Kopetz, 1999).

The nuclear field of any country is a very critical area, which is the most powerful strength of the country as well as the increase the physical security of the country. The data of the nuclear department is very confidential, and every country tried their best to keep safe this kind of information because if this data is breached by any individual or the group, the whole security of the country. For enhancement of the security of the military system as well as the nuclear security, country professional develops such kind of safety-critical software systems to make the data very secure as well as they hire some highly experienced persons to operate their systems. They provide high-level security as well as make all the ways close for any kind of data breaches as well as for the hackers. These systems are very critical as well as very sensitive because it carries a lot of critical and confidential information, but any kind of failure or executing any malicious scripts in the system can cause the data loss and breach which will completely damage the security system of the country (Kloos & Eschbach, 2011).

The same system is also used in aircraft systems. It is used in the aircraft because the protection and tracking are very important in the air. It is possible for aircrafts to hold the wrong direction because the pilots are just using the software in their carpets to fly the aircrafts. The system for the aircraft provides the exact paths and the directions to reach the right position, as well as these systems, also notify the headquarter of the aircrafts and the pilots during flight about the weather conditions, as well as it also provides the brief information if any mountain or any object or any other craft is flying in the opposite direction at the same height. But if the failure occurs in the system, the pilots may have to face a lot of problems to fly the airplane as well as it can cause the crash (Zeilinger, Burg, Chaudhry, & Hussain, 2000). For instance, in starting years of 21^st century, the very biggest crash of the decade happened. Indian and Pakistani airplanes collided, and many lives were wasted in that crash. The news as well as the information from the professionals described that it was happened because of the system failure fixed in the airplane because the systems did not that the other plane is also flying at the same direction and due to the foggy weather pilots were unable to guess where they are going as well as which frequency or height they have to choose to fly (Ye, 2005).

In real life the consumer products, there are many devices are being used to control the traffic on the roads. These devices and the software systems are professionally given to the traffic wardens, traffic police as well as the traffic control departments of every city. The professionals are keeping an eye on the traffic to control effectively. In the past decades, many people didn’t care about the traffic signals, and they break the laws of the traffic, and sometimes the police unable to hold and approach them. But with the passage of time, technology is very effective, and many advancements are seen in the technology. The safety-critical software systems are also being used in the traffic controlling departments where professionals are controlling and watching all the activities of the traffic. In case any break of the traffic signal occurs by the driver of any vehicle, and that person successfully goes out of the range of police, the smart traffic houses can easily trace them and taking the pictures of victim along with the vehicle number (Pfleeger, 1996).

Safety-Critical Systems

The system operation always remains safe in the safety-critical software systems. Such kind of systems is making sure that safety is sustainable for the people. People or their surrounding environment should never be damaged by the system. The monitoring system in the aircraft or the control system for automobiles are lies in some of the safety-critical systems. Such kind of system is useable and valuable, but the failure of such systems can cause the damage to the environment, damage to the person or the important property or any kind loss of any wellbeing in the environment or in the circle of that system. There are several kinds of well-known applications or real-life examples in the world such as the aircraft control for the flights, the nuclear systems, the medical systems as well as the military weapons.

A number of modern information systems are becoming nowadays the safety-critical in the generic context due to any kind of loss of the human being as well as the loss of finance from their failure. Furthermore, such kind the safety-critical systems will become very powerful, intelligent as well as very common in the future. The development of safety-critical software systems required a lot of the information from the real world in the form of the specifications, verification, processor as well as the architecture in the perspective of the software. Many problems, as well as the challenges of these kinds of systems, exist, and those problems may be visible or invisible, but the visible issues have arisen in information security. The information security proposes that the major challenge of the critical safety systems is a part of the security.

As mentioned above that there are some examples where the safety-critical software systems are being used. This software is commonly used in all fields, which are mentioned above but these are mostly used in the medical.

1.       Discuss with real-life examples what could possibly go wrong with safety-critical systems?

There are many real-life examples available for the failures of the safety-critical systems which have happened in the past decades. The very first failure is discussed in the study, highlighting the failure of the space shuttle countdown at the first launch of the space shuttle. The second failure was known as the Arianne V launch, as well as the third was the Mars Climate Orbiter and the Mars Polar Lander’s losses. In starting years of 21^st century, the very biggest crash of the decade happened. Indian and Pakistani airplanes collided, and many lives were wasted in that crash. The news as well as the information from the professionals described that it was happened because of the system failure fixed in the airplane because the systems did not that the other plane is also flying at the same direction and due to the foggy weather pilots were unable to guess where they are going as well as which frequency or height they have to choose to fly (Stavridou, 2012).

2.       Suggest appropriate reliability metrics for the classes of software systems below. Give reasons for your choice of metric. Predict the usage of these systems and suggest appropriate values of the reliability metrics.

 References of Safety-Critical System

Kloos, J., & Eschbach, T. H. (2011). Risk-based testing of safety-critical embedded systems driven by fault tree analysis . In 2011 IEEE Fourth International Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation Workshops, 26-33.

Kopetz, H. (1999). Automotive electronics. In Proceedings of 11th Euromicro Conference on Real-Time Systems Euromicro RTS'99 , 132-140.

Pfleeger, B. K. (1996). Software quality: the elusive target [special issues section]. IEEE software, 12-21.

Stavridou, J. B. (2012). Safety-critical systems. High-Integrity System Specification and Design, 485.

Ye, F. (2005). Justifying the use of COTS Components within safety critical applications (Doctoral dissertation, University of York).

Zeilinger, G., Burg, J. P., Chaudhry, N., & Hussain, H. D. (2000). Fault systems and Paleo-stress tensors in the Indus Suture Zone (NW Pakistan). Journal of Asian Earth Sciences, 547-559.