Software approach to hazard detection using on-line analysis of safety constraints

Hazard situations in safety-critical systems are typically complex, so there is a need for means to detect complex hazards and react in a timely and meaningful way. This paper addresses the problem of hazard detection through the development of an online analysis tool. The approach allows the user to specify complex multi-source hazards using a query-like language, uses both synchronous and asynchronous online checking approaches to balance efficiency and expressiveness, accommodates dynamic applications through dynamic constraint addition, and supports distributed and parallel applications running in heterogeneous environments.