Beginning to Define a Body of Knowledge for Safety Practitioners

Boughton, C.

The Australian scene with respect to safety critical systems learning is relatively empty except for a few pockets of expertise. As to certification it seems there are no providers except through overseas links. On a world wide perspective, only the UK, USA and Germany are somewhat better in that there are several learning centres but only two providers of any form of certification appropriate to functional safety practitioners or engineers. Most safety critical systems specialists and courses reside in the USA or the UK. Within industry world wide there seems to be a great deal of ignorance about evaluating, constructing, managing and maintaining, software-based safety critical systems. This is especially so in Australia. The Australian Computer Society National Technical Committee on Safety-Critical Systems (ACS-SCSC) has known of the general ignorance and lack of skills within Australia for some time and so, has recently embarked on a program to set up a new (software) safety critical systems course so that it is more accessible, affordable and appealing to a broader audience than most of the current offerings. It is proposed that a new (software) safety critical systems course be made available via the vehicle of a specialist subject within the Certified Member of the Australian Computer Society (CMACS) offerings. In part, such a course is intended to make the broader Australian IT industry more aware of the importance of software safety issues within today's IT developments.

Cite as: Boughton, C. (2002). Beginning to Define a Body of Knowledge for Safety Practitioners. In Proc. Seventh Australian Workshop on Industrial Experience with Safety Critical Systems and Software (SCS 2002), Adelaide, Australia. CRPIT, 15. Lindsay, P., Ed. ACS. 31-40.

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