Plenary Lecture

Research and Development of Safety Related Systems

Professor Josef Boercsoek
Universitat Kassel
Computer Architecture a. System Programmierung
Wilhelmshoeher Allee 73,
34121 Kassel, Germany
Email: j.boercsoek@uni-kassel.de

Abstract: The influences of digital computer systems increase consistently. This provides a number of possible research areas and activities. Furthermore, safety technologies for computer architectures and system programming are gaining more importance, national and international wide. These are not only the results of many research approaches and development work but also due to the fact that it can be mathematically proven. Therefore are the actual implementation, design and architecture of great importance also during the research and development phase. The actual implementation is not only evaluated and determined by a derived model but additionally the architecture is going to be validated and verified by an external test organisation. This means that the university, as a cooperation partner, has to be able to provide such equipment, if projects should be successful. One of the major goals of the department computer architecture and system programming is to design and develop intelligent, reliable and safe computer architectures, which are mathematically proven, and the real architecture can be verified and validated. Additionally, new and original research leads to concepts of new safety structures which are being developed within the department. These research activities do not only include the actual hardware design but also the development of safe software and safe network systems. The entire system has to be safe and has to be considered when developing safety systems for industries such as the process and chemical industries.
In safety systems diagnostic of complex systems is an important subject and an important research domain of the department. Preventive methods and procedures have to be determined, developed and established, which allows a high diagnostic performance while using optimised resources. These methods should be used for hardware components as well as in a modified approach for software components. The aim is to develop fundamental models for the calculation of the failure rate (λ), the probability of failures (PFD, PFH) and the availability (MTTF), necessary parameters for safety related systems. The usage of safety related system will drastically increase within the next few years, due to stricter regulations and are based on the standards IEC EN 61508, IEC EN 61511 und IEC 62061 etc. A high demand, as international studies and survey demonstrated, will arise for safe computer technologies and system programming. This will also influence the diagnostic ability of computer architectures and their peripheral units.
Fundamentals of the development of safety systems and new research aspects are detailed based on current research projects investigated at in the department computer architecture and system programming.

Brief Biography of the Speaker:
Professor Dr.-Ing. habil. Josef Boercsoek holds two degrees from University of Applied Science of Darmstadt and University of Kassel. He received his PhD from the Technical University of Ilmenau and habilitated from the University of Kassel, where he received his professorship. Additionally, he worked several years in the fields of automation and safety related systems in industries. Currently, he is the head of the department computer-architecture and system-programming at the University of Kassel and the director of the department research and development at HIMA. He published over 40 papers at national and international conferences and is the author of over 7 books. He is a member of several international boards such as safety certification group of Foundation Fieldbus (FFSIS), and the Instrumentation, Systems and Automation Society (ISA SP84) and he is a member of several national boards such as i.e. Funktionale Sicherheit E, EPS, Normen IEC 61511 (functional safety, E,EPS, Norm IEC 61511), EMV und funktionale Sicherheit, IEC 61508, IEC 61000-2-1 (EMV and functional safety IEC 61508, IEC 61000-2-1) and SPS Norm IEC 61131 1-8 (PLC Norm IEC 61131 1-8).