Critical Systems Engineering

Engineering systems to avoid disasters

Ø A critical system is any system whose ‘failure’ could loss

human life, the system’s environment or the existence of the
organization which operates the system.
Types of Critical Systems

1- Safety Critical ‫) ةجرحس ةمالس ا‬

2- Mission Critical ‫) ة ةجر ةمالس ا‬
3- Business Critical ‫) ةج جل ةمالس ا‬
Types of Critical Systems
1-Safety Critical ‫) ةجرحس ةمالس ا‬
A safety-critical system ‫ا‬SCS) or life-critical system:
Ø Those critical systems which, if fails, can cause damages to
life or loss of life.
Ø There are various software which are in use in places where
life risks are present and can cause loss of life if the system
fails.
Examples of safety-critical systems are:
Ø a control system for a chemical manufacturing plant,
Ø the controller of an unmanned ‫ا‬without driver) metro system,
Ø a controller of a nuclear plant,
Ø a controller of an aircraft, etc.
Types of Critical Systems
2- Mission Critical ‫) ة ةجر ةمالس ا‬

A mission critical factor of a system is any factor

(component, equipment, personnel, process, procedure,
software, etc.) that is important to business operation or to
an organization.
Mission critical systems are made to avoid failure to complete
the overall system, project objectives or one of the goals for
which the system was designed.

Examples of Mission Systems:

Ø a navigational system for a spacecraft,
Ø software controlling a baggage handling system of an
airport
Types of Critical Systems
3- Business Critical ‫) ةج جل ةمالس ا‬
Ø Business critical systems are programmed to avoid
significant economic costs; e.g., loss of business or
damage to reputation of business.
Ø Thus business critical system causes financial loss when
it fails.

Examples of business-critical systems are:

Ø the customer accounting system in a bank,
Ø stock-trading system, ERP system of a company,
Ø Internet search engine, etc.
Attributes of Critical Systems

Ø Several criteria are considered in critical systems, which

are:

§ Dependability, Availability, Reliability, Correctness,

Performability, Maintainability, Testability, Safety and
Security.
Attributes of Critical Systems

Ø Availability: Concerned with ability to deliver required

services correctly at a specified instant of time.
Ø Reliability: Concerned with ability of the system to
perform the required services correctly for a given time
interval.
Ø Maintainability: Concerned with the ability of the
system to evolve.
Ø Safety: Concerned with the ability of the system to
protect the human life .
Ø Security: Concerned with the ability of the system to
protect itself.
Dependability Costs
Ø Dependability costs tend to increase
exponentially as increasing levels of
dependability are required.
Costs of increasing dependability
Reliability terminology
Faults and failures

Ø Failures are a usually a result of system

errors that are derived from faults in the
system.
Ø However, faults do not necessarily result in
system errors.
§ The faulty system state may be transient and ‘corrected’
before an error arises.
Ø Errors do not necessarily lead to system
failures
§ The error can be corrected by built-in error detection and
recovery
§ The failure can be protected against by built-in protection
facilities.
Reliability achievement
Ø Achieving systems reliability is generally based on the
notion that system failures may be reduced by
reducing the number of system faults.
Ø Fault reduction techniques:
• Fault avoidance
• Fault detection
• Fault tolerance
 Reliability achievement

Fault avoidance
§ Development technique are used for minimize the
possibility of mistakes before they result in the
introduction of system failures
Fault detection and removal
§ Verification and validation techniques that increase
the probability of detecting and correcting errors
before the system goes into service are used.
Fault tolerance
§ Run-time techniques are used to ensure that system
faults do not lead to system failures.
 People and critical systems

Ø People are essential elements of critical systems

Ø People are probably the most important single source
of failure in critical systems;
Ø BUT they are also the most effective mechanism we
have for incident/accident avoidance,
Ø Human factors are important in the design, the
development and the operation of critical systems
 People and critical systems

Ø So, You can model a system as an input-output

mapping
Ø where some inputs will result in erroneous outputs
Ø The reliability of the system is the probability that a
particular input will lie in the set of inputs that cause
incorrect outputs
Ø Different people will use the system in different ways
so this probability is not a static system attribute but
depends on the system’s environment
People and critical systems
Safety

Safety is a property of a system that reflects the

system’s ability to operate, normally or
abnormally, without danger of causing human
death and without damage to the system’s
environment
Safety-critical systems

Ø Safety is a system attribute that reflects the system’s ability to

operate without threatening people or the environment.
Ø People use safety-critical systems every day;
§ for example: in phones, in cars, in computers, in medical, in
aerospace, even traffic lights.
Security

The security of a system : is a system

property that reflects the system’s
ability to protect itself from external
attack.