OBJECTIVE This paper analyzes some of the problems with error counting as well as the difficulty of proposing viable alternatives. BACKGROUND Counting and tabulating negatives (e.g., errors) are currently popular ways to measure and help improve safety in a variety of domains. They uphold an illusion of rationality and control but may offer neither real insight nor productive routes for impro...

DuraNode is a sensing system designed for structural monitoring. It can detect the damage of structural members, provide crucial intelligence information of structural integrity and activate emergency response mechanism in the initial stages of a disaster. The sensor encompasses three MEMS-type accelerometers (SD-1221) and Wi-Fi (802.11b) communication adapter. It operates on solar power and re...

The evaluation of the safety level in concrete structures should be done considering the stochastic behavior of main involved parameters not only in ultimate conditions but also in serviceability and durability ones. In fact, particularly in concrete structures, the large variability of fundamental mechanical parameters, may give rise to important deviations from the behavior expected if a dete...

Structural noise is an important factor that endangers aircraft fatigue life and flight safety. It also has a negative effect on aircraft stealth performance and noise navigability. An optimal design of a structure-acoustic coupled system is an effective way to reduce noise and vibration. Due to the uncertainties that exist in the structural and acoustical parameters, the traditional determinis...

In many cases, crashes at intersections account for over 50% of all urban road accidents. The need to reduce these crashes has fostered considerable research on the development and evaluation of traffic safety at intersections. This paper introduces a micro-level behavioral method for estimating crash potential at signalized and unsignalized intersections for different traffic characteristics. ...

System safety research has a weakness in terms of evaluation. In particular, the field has a poor track record for applying appropriate research methods to the questions we wish to answer, and for evaluating the answers in a convincing way. Given changes in government and public attitudes to research funding, this will be an increasing concern in the near future. In this paper, we define a taxo...

Safety cases are now regularly used to communicate the argument about the achievement of acceptable levels of safety for safety critical systems. Increasingly, safety standards such as Defence Standard 00-56 require the scope of the safety case to cover not only the development of the system, but also operating and maintenance through life, including decommissioning. This involves two dimension...

In previous papers, we asserted that software system safety is primarily concerned with epistemic questions, that is, questions concerning knowledge and the degree of confidence that can be placed in that knowledge. We also enumerated a set of 21 foundational epistemic questions, discussed some of the difficulties that exist in answering these questions adequately today, and speculated briefly ...