Safety Challenges for Model Driven Development

New techniques and approaches are emerging for systems development, such as the OMG's model driven architectures(MDA). These approaches represent a very distinct shift from traditional approaches, (such as the ubiquitous V model). They offer ways of reducing uncertainty by breaking down the process into different areas of concern or domains, each domain representing a different perspective of the system. This separation of concerns is valuable in that it helps develop a mature body of theory for each perspective across several projects and therefore would facilitate improvement. Yet, this fragmentation of the process challenges our ability to deploy conventional safety analysis techniques that are often structured around the systems development model and traceability of system requirements and behaviour. This paper discusses these issues and suggests some approaches to resolving the difficulties.