A Process to Support Safety Analysis for a System-of-Systems

Autonomous vehicles grow importance in many domains and depending on the domain and user needs, autonomous vehicles can be designed as stand-alone solutions as in the automotive domain or as part of a fleet with a specific purpose as in the earth moving machinery domain. Contemporary hazard analysis methods primarily focus on analyzing hazards for single systems. Such an analysis requires knowledge about typical usage of a product, and it is evaluated among others if an operator is able to handle a critical situation. Each hazard analysis method requires specific information as input in order to conduct the method. However, for system-of-systems it is not yet clear how to analyze hazards and provide the required information. In this paper we describe a use case from the earth moving machinery domain where autonomous machines collaborate as a system-of-systems to achieve the mission. We propose a hierarchical process to document a system-of-systems and propose the use of model-based development methods. In this work we discuss how to utilize the provided details in a hazard analysis. Our approach helps to design a complex system-of-systems and supports hazard analysis in a more effective and efficient manner.