An approach for designing system dedicated to exploration

Designing a new technology or system entails risks that must be taken into account by R&D departments.

This article presents an approach to designing systems that are safe and reliable for users and the environment.

Based on feedback from research carried out in the field of safety in technology, this approach implements a process of awareness of the Danger-Safety-Risk cycle at the design stage.

To illustrate this, we'll take the example of the design of a space exploration system. In this context, the notion of a user-designer project refers to the design of a technical system that must protect humans in a potentially unpredictable environment.

Designers who follow this approach will be able to take the semantic measure of both the sources and the means of propagation of an accident. The effects of an accident could be the partial or total destruction of the system and its environment.

This article presents the five safety invariants (Chapter 2) that underpin this design approach, and details the principles of the approach (Chapter 3). Finally, the article describes an implementation of this approach using an example from space exploration (chapter 4).