Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!ginosko!uunet!motcid!murphyn From: murphyn@cell.mot.COM (Neal P. Murphy) Newsgroups: comp.software-eng Subject: Re: Information on current state of software safety desired Message-ID: <195@cherry5.UUCP> Date: 3 Oct 89 14:31:12 GMT References: <1321@cs.rit.edu> Reply-To: murphyn@cherry5.UUCP (Neal P. Murphy) Organization: Motorola Inc. - cellular Infrastructure Div., Arlington Heights, IL 60004 Lines: 26 > I am currently starting graduate research into the area of > software safety. This research is intended to be initially very > broad until I can narrow my focus. I am specifically interested > in, but not limited to, the following areas: > ... > (3) What, if anything, is motivating the current interest in > safety ? Has there been any single event that might have > sparked interest in the field recently ? One thing that motivated my interest in software safety was the failure of a radiation therapy (cancer treatment) LINAC built by some North American company. While I think that the failure resulted from a system design flaw, the problem is directly related to software safety, since the software was performing most of the control of the system and should have had access to sensors that would have enabled the system to detect the massive overdose of radiation and shut it off in time. The software developers should have been aware of the lethal radiation levels that could be generated and should have insisted on a fail-safe shutoff, either as part of the system or parallel to it. Ah, well, as long as everyone involved learned from their mistakes. We're only human. We can only try to do our best. Mostly we succeed, sometimes we don't. "The operation was a success, but we lost the patient." NPN