e-Flyer - SAFETY-CRITICAL SYSTEMS CLUB (SCSC)

Happy New Year! We hope you have had a restful break.

Welcome to the SCSC’s January 2025 e-flyer, keeping you up-to-date with details of club events, publications and activities which may be of interest to you.

Safety-Critical Systems Symposium SSS’25

The next Safety-Critical Systems Symposium will be held at The Milner York Hotel (formerly the Principal York), York, UK, 4 - 6 February 2025.

This Symposium features keynote speakers, talks selected by submitted abstracts, and also invited presentations. 

• Dewi Daniels, Software Safety Limited
• John McDermid, Centre for Assuring Autonomy, University of York
• Amy Dickens, Department for Science, Innovation and Technology
• Richard Hawkins, University of York
• Catherine Menon, University of Hertfordshire
• Paula Palade, Jaguar Land Rover
• David King, Vertical Aerospace

The event programme will be confirmed soon, the provisional programme can be viewed here. ​​​​

Poster presentation
If you would like to present a poster at SSS’25 please contact mike.parsons@scsc.uk 

• On the evening of Monday 3rd Feb there will be a guided tour of the University of York Institute of Safe Autonomy, with drinks and buffet reception.  
• Tuesday evening has the tools and vendors exhibition, buffet meal and drinks reception. 
• On Wednesday 5th Feb there will be a selection of technical workshops and social activities to attend. This will be followed by the banquet where the after-dinner speaker will be Graham Jolliffe. 

Exhibiting at SSS'25

If you are interested in exhibiting at the Symposium please contact alex.king@scsc.uk. The exhibition package includes: 2-day Symposium pass for two members of staff (4th and 5th Feb 2025); logo in the event brochure, buffet meal and drinks.

Sponsorship of SSS'25

If you are interested in sponsoring a particular aspect of SSS’25 (e.g. proceedings, banquet) please contact alex.king@scsc.uk in the first instance.

If you have any questions relating to SSS’25 please contact office@scsc.uk

Crossword Competition

The 3rd Safety Systems Crossword prize competition Safety Systems Crossword 2024 is also available for you to test your knowledge of the world of System Safety! Send your completed grids to crossword@scsc.uk or drop into the crossword entry box at SSS’25 by 1pm on 5th Feb 2025. The first correct answer drawn from a hat at SSS’25 will win a £100 Amazon voucher!

Working Groups

Safe System Architecting Working Group (SSAWG)

The Safe System Architecting Working Group (SSAWG) is a joint initiative between the INCOSE UK Architecture Working Group and the Safety Critical Systems Club, with a vision of addressing systems safety through the promotion of choosing, using, and developing appropriate architectures. 

The group’s web page provides details on its aims and objectives - https://scsc.uk/gw

Contact jane.fenn@scsc.uk for more details.

Safe AI Working Group (SAIWG)

The Safe AI Working Group (SSAWG) is producing a position paper for SSS'25. The group’s web page provides details on its aims and objectives - https://scsc.uk/gb. 

Contact alan.simpson@ebeni.com for more details.

For a list of all upcoming Working Group meetings please see the Events Diary (https://scsc.uk/events?tab=working) If you would like to participate in one or more of these please contact the group leader.

Safety Futures Initiative (SFI) Working Group

The Safety Futures working group meets once a month to bring together fresh perspectives, innovative ideas and insights. The Safety Futures is diligently working on developing a comprehensive roadmap to guide new safety professionals in exploring career paths across various industries.
To supplement this, we have an upcoming initiative to create a University 'League' Table to rank universities based on their safety engineering courses and the career pathways they support. We are also looking to start a reverse mentoring programme where we can match more experienced people with new professionals for information exchange.

The next meeting will be 28th January, 2pm (UTC), so please contact Khadijah Khatun, khadijah.khatun@scsc.uk, if you would like to attend or if anything about the group takes your interest. We encourage anyone to get involved to help shape the future of safety engineering careers.

Newsletter

If you wish to contribute an article to the Newsletter, please contact the editor, paul.hampton@scsc.uk. The latest edition of the SCSC newsletter is available at: https://scsc.uk/newsletter

Article: Reliability After The Post Office Horizon Scandal - Harold Thimbleby

As the enquiry into the Post Office Horizon scandal continues, Harold Thimbleby explores this and other cases where IT system failures have had significant impact on welfare and safety. He discusses the legal factors that make it hard for IT systems to be called into question, and proposes measures that could be taken to prevent these issues arising again in the future.

View the article

Article: Environmental Hazard And Impact Identification - Nick Hales

Nick Hales expands on his earlier article, published in the February 2024 News- letter, which advocated the use of a modified Doughnut Economics ring using three rings to recognise the current situation of the global economy. Nick helps illustrate these concepts with a real-world example relating to the production of electric vehicle batteries, in particular, the mining of resources required for their manufacture.

View the article

Article: Women In Engineering: Reflections - Wendy Owen

Back in June, Wendy Owen wrote an article celebrating International Women in Engineering Day (INWED). The article was published on the SCSC website to tie in with the INWED event, which occurs on 23rd June every year. Wendy has kindly agreed to reproduce the content in this edition of the newsletter; this will help make the insights arising from her group discussion with prominent female system safety engineers available to as wide as readership as possible and ties in with Ada Lovelace Day (findingada.com) also celebrated in October.

View the article

Advertising in the SCSC Newsletter
The club publishes its newsletter Safety Systems three times a year in February, May and October.  The newsletter is free to all and can be made available in electronic form for inclusion on corporate members' intranet sites.
Half or full page advertising space is available.
If you would like to advertise in the SCSC Newsletter, please contact office@scsc.uk for further information.

eJournal

If you wish to contribute to the eJournal as a reviewer and/or an editor, please register here.

Vol. 3 Iss. 2, the summer issue of the Safety-Critical Systems eJournal is available here:https://scsc.uk/SCSC-196, featuring three peer-reviewed papers:

• Peter Ladkin examines a guidance document prepared by ISO and IEC working groups on functional safety in the presence of “Artificial Intelligence” subsystems in his paper “Functional Safety and Oracular Subsystems: An Observation on ISO/IEC TR 5469: Artificial Intelligence — Functional safety and AI”. He considers critically the way the guidance expects AI subsystems to be interpreted architecturally and behaviourally, through considering the example of adaptive control. He also proposes some concepts which may be useful in characterising such subsystems.
• Niki Mok addresses alertness and attention of operators in safety-critical systems, in particular train drivers. In “System Analysis on Driver Monitoring System for Mainline Railway”, she suggests new capabilities to augment the existing vigilance system for UK mainline passenger trains This paper was the basis of her presentation on day 2 of the last Safety Critical Systems Symposium in Bristol, SSS'24.
• Amit Sahu and Carmen Carlan present “Towards Defect-based Testing for Safety-critical ML Components”, in which they propose a process for collecting adequate test data for Machine Learning components used in safety-critical applications. Two case studies are used to illustrate the method: stop sign recognition and railway track segmentation — both are implemented using ML components.

Full SCSC Membership

Why not become a full member of the SCSC? This gives you discounts on events and access to all website content, and gives you a say in the running of the club. Full membership details are here:  https://scsc.uk/membership

Other Events

SCSC - Events diary

CW International Conference 2025
26-27 March 2025, Cambridge, UK + Online

This year's conference will provide an interdisciplinary platform, engaging technologists, policymakers, and industry leaders to drive the conversation on strengthening technological resilience in a rapidly evolving world.

Bookings are now open

Alex and Mike

alex.king@scsc.uk

mike.parsons@scsc.uk

scsc.uk

thescsc.org