The course structure and the core modules cover the fundamentals of system safety in such depth and breadth as to be applicable to any safety standard, for example the ISO 26262. I chose the modules Human Factors for Safety Critical Systems and Computers and Safety and believe this to be a very good combination for anybody working in the automotive industry. Unlike previous degree courses I refer to my York notes a great deal since they are extremely relevant to my day to day safety activities.” Robert, Jaguar Land Rover “As a clinician, I have found this course to be absolutely essential. I would recommend that anyone working in healthcare with an interest in patient safety should take the Foundations of System Safety Engineering module at the very least. For those who have a more focused safety role, particularly in healthcare technology, the University offers a number of modules to choose from, working up to the award of a Postgraduate Certificate, Diploma or MSc Safety Critical Systems Engineering.” Beverley, Department of Health Informatics Directorate The discipline of SSE has developed over the last half of the twentieth century. It can be viewed as a process of systematically analysing systems to evaluate risks, with the aim of influencing design in order to reduce risks, i.e. to produce safer products. In mature industries, such as aerospace and nuclear power, the discipline has been remarkably successful, although there have been notable exceptions to the generally good safety record, e.g. Fukushima, Buncefield and the Heathrow 777 accident. Various trends pose challenges for traditional approaches to SSE. For example, classical hazard and safety analysis techniques deal poorly with computers and software where the dominant failure causes are errors and oversights in requirements or design. Thus these techniques need extending and revising in order to deal effectively with modern systems. Also, in our experience, investigation of issues to do with safety of computer systems have given some useful insights into traditional system safety engineering, e.g. into the meaning of important concepts such as the term hazard. The course therefore has a number of optional modules looking at software safety.

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