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For safety critical systems, the fundamental concern is the ability to avert accidents from occurring.
Even low failure likelihoods for software products are not tolerable in such systems if these failures may lead to accidents. Consequently, in addition to the quality assurance activities, different particular methods are also used for safety critical systems based on analysis of hazards, or logical pre conditions for accidents: •
Damage control through escape routes, safe abandonment of products and materials, and devices for limiting physical damages to equipment
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Hazard removal through replacement, simplification, decoupling, removal of particular people’ mistakes and decrease of hazardous materials or conditions
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Hazard diminution through design for controlling, use of locking devices and defect minimization using safety margins and superfluity
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Hazard control through lessening exposure, isolation and containment, protection systems, and failsafe design
Both hazard control and damage control are postfailure activities that attempt to include the defects so that they will not lead to accidents or the accident damage can be controlled or minimized. These activities are important to safety critical systems, which are not commonly covered in the quality assurance activities for other systems. A lot of methods for software bug averting, decrease, and tolerance may be used in safetycritical systems for hazard removal and decreases through focused activities on safetycritical product elements or features.
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