EXPERT GUIDE

Safety Verification Methods for Rail Control Software

Since the introduction of modern software-based automated rail control solutions, the complexity of rail control- and signalling systems has grown significantly. These advanced systems can help optimizing the use of critical infrastructure resulting in a better passenger experience, but the main priority is always to guarantee safety. Here, we share an overview of the safety verification practices commonly used in rail control projects in The United States, Sweden and France.

In this guide you will learn:

  • Lower cost and improve the efficiency in the verification process

  • Limit the dependency of accredited testers and reviewers

Safety Verification Methods for Rail Control Software

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Table of Content

  1. Introduction
  2. Safety Verification Methods
  3. Standardization of Rail Control Safety
  4. Examples of best practices
  5. The United States of America
  6. Verification methods in Sweden
  7. Verification methods in France
Introduction

Methodologies and techniques for railway safety assurance

Guaranteeing safety has been the main objective of rail control, or signaling, systems since the first mechanical interlockings were introduced in Britain in the mid-nineteenth century. As we all know, the complexity of these systems has grown steadily since then, via the relay-based interlockings that were dominant during most of the twentieth century, to the software-based, fully automated rail control solutions of today, often responsible also for the driverless operation of the trains.

The increased complexity and responsibilities of these systems means that it is even more important to ensure that the systems themselves are safe, and a significant part of the software development efforts, and project costs, goes into this safety assurance work. We will here try to give a brief overview of different methodologies and techniques used for this, and also introduce the use of formal verification, an automated verification technique based on mathematics, in this context.

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