Towards an Ontology-Based Approach to Safety Management in Cooperative Intelligent Transportation Systems

The expected increase in transports of people and goods across Europe will aggravate the problems related to traffic congestion, accidents and pollution. As new road infrastructure alone would not solve such problems, Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) has been considered as new initiatives. Due to the complexity of behaviors, novel methods and tools for the requirements engineering, correct-by-construction design, dependability, product variability and lifecycle management become also necessary. This chapter presents an ontology-based approach to safety management in Cooperative ITS (C-ITS), primarily in an automotive context. This approach is supposed to lay the way for all aspects of ITS safety management, from simulation and design, over run-time risk assessment and diagnostics. It provides the support for ontology driven ITS development and its formal information model. Results of approach validation in CarMaker are also given in this Chapter. The approach is a result of research activities made in the framework of Swedish research initiative, referred to as SARMITS (Systematic Approach to Risk Management in ITS Context).