Building a safety case is a common approach to make expert judgement explicit about safety of a system. The issue of confidence in such argumentation is still an open research field. Providing quantitative estimation of confidence is an interesting approach to manage complexity of arguments. This paper explores the main current approaches, and proposes a new model for quantitative confidence estimation based on Belief Theory for its definition, and on Bayesian Belief Networks for its propagation in safety case networks.
In @cite_26 , the inventors of GSN address the confidence issue, by proposing to split a traditional safety case in two pieces. The first is the safety argument, showing all evidences, and the second is a confidence argument that addresses confidence in evidences, contexts, and individual inferences. This confidence argument is also represented with GSN. It starts by adding to the safety case some possible uncertainty sources, which are called Assurance Claim Points (ACP), that are attached to inferences (the arrows connecting claims), contexts (explanatory information), or solutions. Then, for each ACP, an argumentation mainly focuses on demonstrating that the ACP is trustworthy and appropriate, which is built using GSN. Another proposal @cite_7 , is based on the ACP but only focuses on Context and Solution elements. The authors propose to use a map (Common Characteristic Map) as a check list to identify sources of uncertainties, with recursive dependencies. For instance, if a safety case includes a solution which is a "Process result", they propose the generic uncertainties related to "the use of a language", "the use of a tool", "the use of a mechanism", "the involved artifacts", etc. All those characteristics are then refined, with possible recursive dependencies.
@cite_26 @cite_7
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Safety arguments typically have some weaknesses. To show that the overall confidence in the safety argument is considered acceptable, it is necessary to identify the weaknesses associated with the aspects of a safety argument and supporting evidence, and manage them. Confidence arguments are built to show the existence of sufficient confidence in the developed safety arguments. In this paper, we propose an approach to systematically constructing confidence arguments and identifying the weaknesses of the software safety arguments. The proposed approach is described and illustrated with a running example. We introduce assured safety arguments, a new structure for arguing safety in which the safety argument is accompanied by a confidence argument that documents the confidence in the structure and bases of the safety argument. This structure separates the major components that have traditionally been confused within a single safety argument structure. Separation gives both arguments greater clarity of purpose, and helps avoid the introduction of superfluous arguments and evidence. In this paper we describe a systematic approach to establishing both arguments, illustrated with a running example.