Safety Assurance Case Workshop

14 March 2024

Adelard, part of NCC Group, is hosting a Safety Assurance Case Workshop dedicated to the nuclear industry stakeholders.

The workshop is organised to facilitate the exchange of knowledge and to enable the industry to gain a better understanding of the technology and the activities in the area of a safety assurance case framework. 

Date: March 14th, 2024

Time: 1PM – 5PM EST

Format: Hybrid through Teams and at Brookside A, Bethesda North Marriott Hotel & Conference Center (RIC location)

About the event

In view of the industry’s desire for performance-based regulatory evaluation and interest in the safety assurance case approach, Adelard is seeking input for NRC-sponsored research in a DI&C safety assurance case framework tailored to the needs of the US nuclear industry. This framework could be built on results available from the DARPA Automated Rapid Certification of Software (ARCOS) program, which was based on Assurance 2.0. Therefore, Adelard is hosting this workshop focused on the following objectives:  

1. Explain how the assurance case technology is a key enabler for a performance-based approach.

2. Identify stakeholder needs, wants, aspirations, and technology adoption hurdles for informing future research on this topic.

 

Agenda:

 

1PM – 3PM: Adelard presentation of the methodology/technology with an example of the application.

3PM – 5PM: Adelard will engage interested participants in a deeper discussion. Session will focus on workshop's objective #2.

 

Presenters:

 

Prof. Robin Bloomfield - Robin E Bloomfield is a founder of the specialist safety and security consultancy Adelard, now part of NCC Group. He is also a Professor at City, University of London. His work in safety and security in the past 35 years has combined policy formulation, technical consulting and underpinning research. He is a major contributor to the development of the assurance and safety case approach; the use of Claims, Arguments, and Evidence (CAE); and the extension of this work to security and critical infrastructures. He is currently developing Assurance 2.0 with John Rushby of SRI and leading Adelard’s work on the automation of certification and assurance of AI/ML systems. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2014 in recognition of his international leadership in the engineering of safety-critical systems. 

Dr. Sofia Guerra - Dr Sofia Guerra leads the nuclear sector work at Adelard, now part of NCC Group, and is an internationally recognized expert on nuclear I&C systems working closely with the IAEA on COTS assessment, CCF and AI/ML innovation. She has led a wide variety of projects funded by the UK, French, US, Finnish, and Swedish nuclear industry regarding the safety assessment, justification, and reliability estimation of software-based systems and, in particular, the assessment of smart devices. In addition to her nuclear work, she was part of the Independent Safety Advisor/Auditor team for several UK defense projects. She was registered as a software expert with the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) for several years and has assessed the software component of medical devices.

 

Participants:

 

Stakeholders including the nuclear industry.

NRC staff.