Leveraging a Traceability Information Model in order to enhance the maintenance of automotive Safety Assurance Cases

Abstract: In safety critical systems, Safety Assurance Cases are created in order to provide argumentation as to why a system is reasonably safe. In the automotive industry, the ISO 26262 standard is complied with in order to provide comprehensive and structured argumentation for developed electrical and/or electronic (E/E) systems in regards to function safety. Previous research, while seeing initial results in improving traceability in Safety Assurance Cases, has expressed the importance of creating trace-link between the safety related artefacts and elements in order to provide the argumentation of as to why the complex real-world systems are safe. By utilising the Design Science Research methodology a Traceability Information Model emerged as the design artefact, which has been validated in an industrial setting. The aim is to contribute in how traceability of Safety Assurance Cases can be represented and what the appropriate relationships are. In this paper, the artefacts which are important to traceability and the relevant relationships among them in Safety Assurance Cases are presented and discussed. The results of this study could help future research in identifying the important trace-links required to facilitate the maintenance, by introducing traceability, in other industrial cases and provides a starting point for work in automation of the creation of Safety Assurance Cases.