Accident Analysis and Hazard Analysis using STPA

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With the increasing complexity of modern systems, traditional approaches to safety (most of which were created 50-70 years ago) are losing effectiveness and leading to avoidable losses. In this class, you will learn about a new approach based on systems theory and systems thinking. This approach and its tools, although relatively new, are now widely used in most industries, particularly automobiles, aviation, and defense and can handle very complex systems and so-called "systems of systems." The approach integrates safety and security. International standards have been created or are in progress.

No prerequisites. The class will teach a new approach to safety engineering and thus should be understandable by anyone, even those without an extensive background in traditional safety engineering approaches.

• Why accidents (losses) occur in complex, engineered systems
• Handing complexity: Analytic Decomposition vs. Systems Theory
• A top-down, integrated approach to analyzing and designing safety into complex systems containing hardware, software, and human components.
• A new approach to investigating and analyzing losses called CAST (Causal Analysis based on System Theory)
• A more powerful hazard analysis technique called STPA (System Theoretic Process Analysis)
• Designing safety into systems from the beginning of the concept development process and using analysis to derive the functional safety and security design requirements and design process.
• Safety Management and Safety Management Systems