Traceability and model checking to support safety requirement verification

Abstract

Ensuring safety-critical software safety requires strict verification of the conformance between safety requirements and programs. Formal verification techniques, such as model checking and theorem proving, can be used to partially realize this objective. DO-178C, a standard for airborne systems, allows formal verification techniques to replace certain forms of testing. My research is concerned with applying model checking to verify the conformance between safety requirements and programs. First, a formal language for specifying software safety requirements which are relevant to event sequences is introduced. Second, the traceability information models between formalized safety requirements and programs are built. Third, the checking of a program against a safety requirement is decomposed into smaller model checking problems by utilizing traceability information model between them.