SUNRISE - A Harmonised Safety Assurance Framework For Connected, Automated Mobility Systems

<div class="section abstract"><div class="htmlview paragraph">Safety assurance of Cooperative, Connected, and Automated Mobility (CCAM) systems is a crucial factor for their successful adoption in society, yet it remains a significant challenge. The SUNRISE project has consolidated previous and on-going efforts, and developed a harmonised Safety Assurance Framework (SAF) designed to operationalise the UNECE New Assessment/Test Method (NATM), targeting a wide range of stakeholders including (but not limited to) certifiers, regulators, manufacturers, suppliers, researchers, and assessors. It incorporates a scenario-based approach, underpinned by the system’s Operational Design Domain (ODD) and behaviour for safety assessment. In line with NATM, the SAF consists of multiple pillars: the <b>Audit</b> of manufacturer processes and Safety Management Systems, In-Service Monitoring and Reporting (<b>ISMR</b>) to ensure continued safety during deployment, and <b>Performance Assurance</b> to generate and evaluate safety evidence pre-deployment. While all pillars are integral, this paper concentrates on the Performance Assurance pillar, which integrates three interlinked blocks: <b>Scenario</b>, <b>Environment</b>, and <b>Safety Argument</b>. The Scenario block covers the creation, the formatting, and the storage of logical and concrete scenarios. The Environment block contains an ODD and behaviour based scenario query and retrieval, scenario parameter concretisation, test environment allocation, and test execution. The Safety Argument block contains test evaluation, coverage analysis, safety case formulation, and evaluation decision outcome. Within the SUNRISE project, the SAF has been demonstrated across multiple use cases (various ODDs, systems, and test environment), and several ongoing/ future international collaborative projects are building on top of the SUNRISE SAF and applying it to an even wider set of use cases.</div></div>