IEC 63187 — Tackling complexity in defence systems to ensure safety
, , The Future of Safe Systems: Proceedings of the 31st Safety-Critical Systems Symposium (SSS’23) 7-9th February 2023, York, UK, 233--245. ISBN 979-8363385520.
Abstract
IEC 63187 is the new functional safety framework being developed by the International Electrotechnical Commission for the defence sector. In this sector, applications are typically complex systems, elements of which may them-selves be both technically complex and managerially complex systems in their own right: developed by different suppliers, to different standards, and at different stages in their product lifecycles. Defence systems are also subject to dynamic changes of risk, depending on the context of their deployment. Existing safety standards are not well adapted to this level of complexity. They tend to be aimed at single organisations rather than complex hierarchies, and to focus on the failures of system elements, rather than important emergent properties of the overall system. The new international standard in development, IEC 63187, tackles these problems using modern systems engineering principles. It applies the ISO/IEC 15288 life cycle processes to supplement IEC 61508 and other safety standards, proposing an approach that allows requirements to be tailored to the risk and managed across multiple system layers. This framework is designed to be open, for compatibility with different national approaches to assurance and risk acceptance, and with different traditional standards for realisation of individual system elements. This paper discusses the motivation, principles and approach of IEC 63187 and gives an update of the progress of the drafting of the document through the standardization process.