Safety Risks and Hazards

Risk is not bounded to the software project itself. The Risks can occur after the software has been successfully established and delivered to the customer. These risks are typically related with the consequences of software failure in the area.

Although the possibility of failure of a well-engineered system is small and undetected fault in a computer- based control or monitoring system could result enormous economic damage or worse significant human injury or loss of life. But the monitoring and cost often outweigh the risk. Presently computer software and are hardware used regularly to control safety-critical systems.

When software is used as category of the control system complexity can rise through an order of more or magnitude. Subtle design flaws induced by human error like something which can be uncovered and eliminated in hardware based conventional controls become much harder to uncover when software is used

Hazard analysis and Software safety are software quality assurance activities which focus on the assessment and identification of potential hazards which may impact software negatively and cause an entire system to fail. Hazards can be identified early in the software engineering process software design features can be specified which will either eliminate or control potential hazards.