This is the home page of the Real-time and Embedded Systems Forum Safety Critical work area.

The growing use of embedded computers for safety critical systems, such as transportation systems (air, rail, automotive), medical devices, critical infrastructure (power, water) and the like have raised the bar for commercial products. Traditionally software for such systems was all developed in-house, but economic and technical pressures are leading towards the use of Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) software products for such systems. The key problem for a safety critical system is constructing the end-to-end safety verification assurance argument for approval by a government agency or similar certification authority. The Open Group is working with both COTS component developers and system integrators to remove barriers for the use of COTS in safety-critical systems. As a first step, The Open Group is preparing a Recommended Practice for the documentation and related services that a COTS vendor should provide with a product targeted to the safety-critical marketplace.