Please log in using either your email address or your membership number.
Please register with your name, email address, password and email preferences. You will be sent an email to verify the address.
Please enter the email address used for your account. A temporary password will be emailed to you.
If you would like to present a poster at SSS'24 please contact mike.parsons@scsc.uk. A poster is an opportunity to present your work in an informal way. There will be 2 dedicated poster sessions at the event and any associated abstracts or papers can be published in the symposium proceedings book. See https://scsc.uk/e1007 for more details.
The government has published its 2023 edition of the National Risk Register. It makes interesting reading - there are quite a few systems-related risks, for instance: Rail Accident, Aviation Collision, Malicious Drone Incident and Deliberate disruption of UK space systems and space-based services. It is probably worth considering if your risk register should include some of these wider risks...
The recent air traffic control disruption at NATS due to a flight plan has made many headlines and details of the causes are now being made public. It looks like some unexpected data in the plan caused the primary and backup software to fail. Both the upcoming SCSC Working Group meetings on Data Safety and Complex Systems will discuss the incident. However we shouldn't forget that the whole arrangement of aircraft and crews, rosters and allowable hours contributed to the problems - highlighting an astonishingly fragile complex system (in fact a service). From a robustness perspective, there should have been contingencies at every level so that the knock-on effects were reduced. We await the formal reports into the matter but there are clear lessons already: expect the unexpected and have backups which are diverse in nature.
The Safety Critical Systems Symposium SSS'24 will be held 13th - 15th February 2024 in-person in Bristol, UK.
A first call for abstracts has been announced.
Abstracts can cover any systems safety area, and industrially-relevant topics are especially welcome.
Please note abstracts have to be submitted by 30th June 2023 to mike.parsons@scsc.uk
The IET has announced the Young Women Engineer of the Year Awards 2023, https://youngwomenengineer.theiet.org
This is a great initiative and any women working in systems safety are encouraged to apply. The awards ceremony held last year in London was a fantastic event and well worth attending.
On Sunday 23rd April 2023 at 3pm UK time there will be a test of the national mobile phone emergency alert system which should send a message to about 90% of phones in the UK. In the future true alerts could be more localised to a specific area. This could be a very useful system. Any info about how it is being implemented, and presumably assured, would be appreciated. mike.parsons@scsc.uk
Def Stan 00-056: Safety Management Requirements for Defence Systems
Issue 8 of Defence Standard 00-056, Part 1 (Requirements and Guidance), has been released for review together with its counterpart, Part 2 (Guidance on Establishing a Means of Complying with Part 1) which is at Issue 6.
Please see this Safety Standards Watch post for more information on the standard and the review process.