Comprehensive Change Impact Analysis Applied to Advanced Automotive Systems

Like many manufacturers of complex cyber physical systems, automotive OEMS depend on incremental development. When changes are made to vehicles that were previously assured to be safe, it can be difficult to understand the impact of a change on the overall safety of the vehicle. In previous work we introduced Workflow+$$^+$$, a model-based framework for modelling development and safety processes and their outputs for safety critical systems, and then generating safety assurance from the models. In this work, we demonstrate how the extensive traceability inherent in Workflow+$$^+$$ can be leveraged to enable comprehensive safety-related change impact analyses. This facilitates sound incremental safety assurance to complement incremental development already in use.