UML based severity analysis methodology

This paper addresses the problem of assessing the severity based on UML artifacts and uses the cost of failures of software components and connectors as well as failures of system execution scenarios. It proposes a severity assessment methodology that is performed combining three different hazard analysis techniques: functional failure analysis (FFA), failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA), and fault tree analysis (FTA). This process of estimating severity can be automated in development environments supporting UML by annotating the hazard analysis results and the cost of failure information in the UML diagrams. This methodology is useful for reliability-based risk assessment, performance-based risk assessment and requirement-based risk assessment of software systems.