TL;DR
This paper examines the effectiveness of the DO-178B standard in avionic software safety, highlighting its success in preventing accidents despite lacking empirical validation of its efficacy.
Contribution
It provides an analysis of DO-178B's practical success and emphasizes the need for empirical data to understand why it works so well.
Findings
No passenger aircraft accidents attributed to software failure since DO-178B adoption
DO-178B appears highly effective despite lack of experimental validation
Highlights the importance of understanding the reasons behind its success
Abstract
DO-178B was based on the consensus of the avionic software community as it existed in 1992. Twenty two years after publication, we have no publically available experimental data as to its efficacy. It appears to work extremely well, since there have been no hull loss accidents in passenger service ascribed to software failure. This is a comforting and surprising result. However, if we don't know why DO-178B works so well, there is a danger that we could stop doing something that really matters, which could lead to an accident.
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Taxonomy
TopicsSafety Systems Engineering in Autonomy · Risk and Safety Analysis · Software Reliability and Analysis Research