Assurance cases, and safety cases in particular, often refer to the specific elements of the system for which safety and other properties are argued. All the references should be precisely and unambiguously specified. The solution which would ensure the completeness and correctness of the relations can be based on formal connection of argument elements with the system models.
The concept and a case study of such solution was presented on September 12 at the 5th International Workshop on Assurance Cases for Software-intensive Systems) ASSURE 2017 at SAFECOMP 2017 conference in Trento (Italy). The presented paper “Uniform Model Interface for Assurance Case Integration with System Models” was a result of research cooperation between Gdańsk University of Technology and FDA with the use of Argevide NOR-STA. The article presents the concept of the process of integration of elements of safety arguments with system models, which may include, for example, requirements, design models or risk models. A case study describing integration of safety case with a risk model defining hazards, their causes and safety measures has been described. The paper is available online on Springer website.
The integration of arguments with system models described in the article is, next to patterns and modular arguments, one of the leading areas of NOR-STA development effort aimed at making these functions available to users in 2018.