AS 61508 "Functional safety of electrical/electronic/programmable electronic safety-related systems"
This seven part safety standard, released from 1999 to 2001, also makes appearances under other names such as IEC 61508 and AS/NZS 61508.
A thorough and comprehensive standard, it provides great detail on a wide range of safety management, safety engineering and engineering topics, aimed at the process industry but also widely applied in other domains.
The standard provides the basis for:
- a full life cycle for system, E/E/PES and software;
- developing sufficient safety requirements;
- deriving Safety Integrity Levels (SIL) via risk-based approach;
- setting numerical targets for safety-related systems; and
- techniques and measures to achieve those numerical targets.
Parts 2 and 3 of this safety standard, the sections detailing the techniques and measures to achieve the numerical targets for hardware and software respectively, have a similar role to Def Stan 00-54 Requirements for Safety Related Electronic Hardware in Defence Equipment and Def Stan 00-55 Requirements for Safety Related Software in Defence Equipment.
Citect, in their replacement of the power distribution system for the rail network run by QR.