Product category:
Design and Development Software
News Release from: Hitex Development Tools | Subject: RiskCAT V5.2
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 18 July 2005
Tools keep track of systems safety
compliance
RiskCAT is the standard tool for the management of IEC61508, which is rapidly becoming the main standard for the development of embedded devices for safety-critical applications.
RiskCAT is the standard tool for the management of IEC61508, which is rapidly becoming the main standard for the development of embedded devices for safety-critical applications Having been initially been adopted in the railway industry in the early 2000s, it has spread throughout the embedded systems industry
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 3 Dec 2003 at 8.00am (UK)
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The 61508 standard gives several hundred measures (or "rules"), that could be used during the development process of safety-critical sensitive systems.
The standard is contained in three large documents and is difficult to read and absorb.
Thus challenge for project managers is to decide which of the hundreds of measures apply to their project.
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A further complication is that measures can be "mandatory", "highly recommended" or just "recommended".
How relevant these measures are for a particular project depends on the risk level associated with the system so the first task is to calculate the Safety Integrity level (SIL).
Here RiskCAT helps by computing the SIL either on a purely probabilistic basis or by way of a more qualitative RiskGraph approach.
Having derived the SIL, RiskCAT then displays the measures required using colour highlighting to differentiate mandatory, highly recommend and merely recommended measures.
This immediately shows the project manager which rules must be applied.
RiskCAT also provides requirement profiles that for example, can be used during a project review to look up the exact wording and definitions contained in the text of the standard.
Moreover measures for a particular SIL can be extracted into text documents for later use or review.
RiskCAT V5.2 offers an improved overview of the context of a measure.
Measures are grouped or listed by additional references related to the current measure.
New also is the selection of requirements based on documents, activities (life cycle phases) or keywords.
RiskCAT V5.2 now contains an interface to requirement management tools.
RiskCAT V5.2 is available in English for IEC61508 and German (for DIN EN61508).
Included with RiskCAT are the standard texts as PDFs.
The "basic" variant of RiskCAT contains parts 1 to 3 of the standard, whereas in the "normal" version, parts of 4 and 7 are added.
Finally there are also RiskCAT variants for the DIN EN50128 and DIN EN50129 standards as well as a "tool" version, configurable to manage any specific set of rules.
RiskCAT is distributed in the UK by Hitex.
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