A Holistic Approach to Identify Relevant Taxonomy Concepts for Operational Design Domains of Automated Driving Systems

Developers of an Automated Driving System (ADS) must demonstrate that the system can operate safely within its designated operational environment. A key aspect of this is the Operational Design Domain (ODD), which defines the conditions under which an ADS is designed to operate safely. The ODD utilizes concepts from a taxonomy that formally represent environmental conditions. However, not all concepts within a taxonomy are relevant for the development of an ADS. Current approaches defining an ODD often neglect the systematic identification of relevant and irrelevant concepts. This omission poses a significant challenge to comprehensive system development, as ensuring the inclusion of only relevant concepts in the ODD contributes to a more efficient and streamlined development process. Addressing this requires explicitly, evaluating both relevant and irrelevant concepts, accompanied by justification ensures transparency and traceability. Hence, we present a novel framework that supports the systematic identification of relevant taxonomy concepts for creating an ODD. Additionally, this framework serves as a critical component in establishing a safety-by-design development process by incorporating structured documentation to support the argumentation for including or omitting specific taxonomy concepts. Through a case study, we demonstrate that the framework provides comprehensive and robust justification, streamlines relevance argumentation across taxonomy concepts, and contributes to a reduced ODD validation effort.