Speaker

Prof. Nancy Leveson. Dr. Leveson is a Professor in the MIT Aeronautics and Astronautics Dept. and in the MIT Engineering Systems Division and is head of the MIT Complex Systems Research Lab (CSRL). She is a Fellow of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). Dr. Leveson has been working in the field of system safety and software system safety for 30 years in almost every type of safety-critical system.

Synopsis

We are building systems today with increasing levels of complexity that are overwhelming standard approaches to ensuring safety. The causes of accidents are even changing.

This class will cover fundamental concepts and techniques in building and ensuring safety, with particular emphasis on those aspects of complex systems not handled well by traditional system safety approaches, such as software and human-computer interaction. New, more powerful approaches to hazard analysis, root cause analysis, and risk management will be covered including the instructor's new STAMP model and the tools (such as new hazard and accident analysis methods) built on it.

Emphasis will be on procedures and techniques that are practical enough to be applied to projects today. Real project experiences with these techniques in different application areas will be described and recent software-related accidents will be reviewed and analyzed.

The goal of this class is not to learn how to satisfy a particular safety standard (although all the approaches taught will satisfy MIL-STD-882), but rather to gain enough deep understanding of the problem to be able to design a tailored program that will be most effective for your project.