16.863
System Safety Concepts
Covers important concepts and techniques in designing and operating safety-critical systems. Topics include the nature of risk, formal accident and human error models, causes of accidents, fundamental concepts of system safety engineering, system and software hazard analysis, designing for safety, fault tolerance, safety issues in the design of human-machine interaction, verification of safety, creating a safety culture, and management of safety-critical projects. Includes a class project involving the high-level system design and analysis of a safety-critical system. Enrollment may be limited.
Spring 2016 · System Safety
Topics
- Introduction, Causality, Bhopal, Hindsight Bias
- CAST and Accident Analysis
- Traditional HA, Lecture on Quantification
- Systems Theoretic Process Analysis (STPA) Introduction, Basic Components (hazard, constraints, HCS)
- STPA, How to Do It
- Design for Safety
- Human Factors
- Cyber Security
- Operations, Regulation
- Guest Lecture
- Management, SUBSAFE
- Presentations of Class Projects
Readings
- [ESW] Chapters 1 and 2.
- [Safeware] Chapter 1.
- Part 1—Chapters 1–2 Questions Accident Models, STAMP, Systems Theory
- [ESW] Chapters 3 and 4.
- [ESW] Chapters 5 and 11.
- SES #: 4 · CLASS TOPICS: Traditional HA, Lecture on Quantification · READINGS: [Safeware] pp. 305–11, 313–26, 327–32, 341–44, 350–58
- SES #: 5 · CLASS TOPICS: Systems Theoretic Process Analysis (STPA) Introduction, Basic Components (hazard, constraints, HCS) · READINGS: [ESW] Chapters 6 and 7 (only pp. 211–30).
- SES #: 6 · CLASS TOPICS: STPA, How to Do It · READINGS: [ESW] Chapter 8.
- [Safeware] Chapter 16, Follensbee.
- SES #: 9 · CLASS TOPICS: Cyber Security · READINGS: Young and Leveson paper
- [ESW] Chapters 12.
- SES #: 12 · CLASS TOPICS: Management, SUBSAFE · READINGS: [ESW] Chapters 13 and 14.
- Leveson, Nancy G. “Technical and Managerial Factors in the NASA Challenger and Columbia Losses: Looking Forward to the Future.” In Controveries in Science and Technology Vol. 2: From Climate to Chromosomes . Edited by Kleinman, Cloud-Hansen, Matta, and Handelsman. Mary Ann Liebert Incorportaion, 2008. ISBN: 9780913113424.
- Leveson, Nancy G. Safeware: System Safety and Computers . Addison-Wesley Professional, 1995. ISBN: 9780201119725.
Prerequisites & course information
Same subject as IDS.340[J] Prereq: Permission of instructor G (Fall) 3-0-9 units
Sources
- Course catalogue ↗2026–2027
- MIT OpenCourseWare ↗Spring 2016
- MIT OCW calendar ↗
- MIT OCW readings ↗
- MIT OCW syllabus ↗
- Historical MIT OpenCourseWare offering. Named reading entries and schedule topics are automatically extracted from the linked source pages.