Defining Model-Driven Safety-Critical Software Engineering, with International Standard

The application of software systems in safety-critical domains necessitates the use and adherence to not only best practices buts also standards that are established for such domains. A number of internationally established standards for software development exist in domains, such as on-board avionics, telecommunication, and military. The United States and European, RTCA and EUROCAE, respectively, have established the DO-178C specification as the certification standard for developing on-board avionic software systems. While specifically developed for the avionic field the DO-178C specification has applicability in other safety-critical software domains. The challenge faced by developers in using the DO-178 standard specification, in non-avionic safety-critical domains, is that of transferring the specificities of avionics development, contained in the specification into the intended domain of application. The work presented in this report presents an approach to using the DO-178C specification in the general field of object-oriented model-driven software engineering. Because of the nature of theses domains, i.e. safety criticality, the application of formal specifications is incorporated into the derived methodology because of needed correctness and reliability of such systems.