How can we build on the progress made so far to make rail travel truly accessible, affordable and reliable for...
The European Railcast, episode 5 – The Passenger experience: Making Rail more Accessible, Affordable and Reliable
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Towards a Novel Approach to Railway Safety using STPA and Promise Theory
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The 1st International Symposium on Software Fault Prevention, Verification, and Validation
2 ~ 3 December 2024 – Hiroshima, Japan
This paper introduces SafePAM (Safety Promise Assessment Method), an iterative method to formally model cooperation and conditional dependencies between interdependent subsystems in railway safety. It builds on STPA (a system-theoretic hazard analysis) and uses promise theory to better reflect real-world conditions. Unlike traditional methods, SafePAM allows conditional dependencies without assuming independence. A railway case study shows how this approach helps connect domain-specific knowledge with system behavior, enabling better validation by experts and maintaining overall system safety.