There are a number of research papers, reports and standards that can be of interest to those learning about CAE, GSN and assurance cases. This set of resources aggregates some of them to provide additional information on the topic. The first set provides an overview of safety and assurance cases, following this are specific papers based on the CAE framework, then papers on GSN.
Overview
Assurance 2.0 by Robin. E. Bloomfield and John Rushby
Assurance 2.0, as an enabler that supports innovation and continuous incremental assurance. Perhaps unexpectedly, it does so by making assurance more rigorous, with increased focus on the reasoning and evidence employed, and explicit identification of defeaters and counterevidence.
Towards Identifying and closing Gaps in Assurance of autonomous Road vehicleS -- a collection of Technical Notes Part 1 and 2 by Robin. E. Bloomfield, Gareth Fletcher, Heidy Khlaaf, Philippa Ryan, Shuji Kinoshita, Yoshiki Kinoshit, Makoto Takeyama, Yutaka Matsubara, Peter Popov, Kazuki Imai, Yoshinori Tsutake
The Tigars project has published a series of Technical Topic Notes on assuring autonomous systems. The notes are available in two bundles. Part 1 addresses: Assurance-overview and issues, Resilience and Safety Requirements, Open Systems Perspective and Formal Verification and Static Analysis of ML Systems. Part 2 addresses: Simulation and Dynamic Testing, Defence in Depth and Diversity, Security-Informed Safety Analysis, Standards and Guidelines.
Safety and Assurance Cases: Past, Present and Possible Future – an Adelard Perspective by Robin. E. Bloomfield
This paper focuses on the approaches used in safety cases for software based systems. The author outlines the history of approaches for assuring the safety of software-based systems, the current uptake of safety and assurance cases and the current practice on structured safety cases. Directions for further development are discussed.
Using Safety Cases in Industry and Healthcare by The Health Foundation
The Interpretation and Evaluation of Assurance Cases by John Rushby
The report provides an introduction to assurance cases. Although this material should be accessible to all those with an interest in these topics, the examples focus on software for airborne systems, traditionally assured using the DO-178C guidelines and its predecessors. The report considers the criteria, methods, and tools that may be used to evaluate whether an assurance case provides sufficient confidence that a particular system or service is fit for its intended use.
CAE
Security-Informed Safety: If It’s Not Secure, It’s Not Safe by Robin. E. Bloomfield, Kate Netkachova, Robert J. Stroud
Building Blocks for Assurance Cases by Robin. E. Bloomfield and Kate Netkachova
Using an Assurance Case Framework to Develop Security Strategy and Policies by Robin. E. Bloomfield, Peter. G. Bishop, Eoin Butler, Kate Netkachova
Understanding, Assessing and Justifying I&C Systems using Claims, Arguments and Evidence by Sofia Guerra
A Layered Approach to Architecting Security-Informed Safety Cases (applied to an avionics case study) by Netkachova, K., Müller, K., Paulitsch, M. and Bloomfield, R.
Using Structured Assurance Case Approach to Analyse Security and Reliability of Critical Infrastructures by Netkachova, K., Bloomfield, R., Popov, P. and Netkachov, O.
Guidance on the Assessment of change Safety Cases by CAA
GSN
A systematic approach for developing software safety arguments by Richard Hawkins and Tim Kelly
The paper provides a systematic approach to software safety argument construction which explicitly considers and addresses assurance. The approach has two key elements which, when used together, facilitate the construction of compelling software safety arguments. Firstly a method for argument construction is proposed, this method extends an existing method by explicitly considering assurance at each step. Secondly a set of software safety argument patterns have been developed. These patterns document reusable software safety argument structures which may be instantiated for the system under consideration. These patterns again build on existing work, and have been developed such that they highlight as clearly as possible where assurance may be gained and lost during the development of the argument.
A New Approach to Creating Clear Safety Arguments by Richard Hawkins, Tim Kelly, John Knight, and Patrick Graydon
The paper introduces assured safety arguments, a new structure for arguing safety in which the safety argument is accompanied by a confidence argument that documents the confidence in the structure and bases of the safety argument. This structure separates the major components that have traditionally been confused within a single safety argument structure. Separation gives both arguments greater clarity of purpose, and helps avoid the introduction of superfluous arguments and evidence. In this paper the authors describe a systematic approach to establishing both arguments, illustrated with a running example.
GSN Draft Standard is a Comprehensive, Authoritative Definition of the Goal Structuring Notation (GSN)
It aims to provide clear guidance on the current best practice in use of the notation for those concerned with the development and evaluation of engineering arguments – argument owners, readers, authors and approvers. The standard was developed by means of a consensus process involving GSN users from both academia and industry, between 2007 and 2010, and is available to the GSN User Community and other interested parties for comment.