Incorporating safety risk in early system architecture trade studies

Ideally, safety should be a part of the early decision making used in conceptual system design. However, effectively evaluating safety risk 3 early enough to inform the early trade studies is not possible with current technology. This paper presents a new approach to preliminary hazard analysis that can be performed prior to system design selection and thus can influence key architectural decisions that will be impossible to change later in the system lifecycle. The approach is illustrated through a concept evaluation and refinement study for the new NASA space exploration.