Software Fault Tolerance in Marine Systems

Software has become an integral part of maritime installation and the amount of software is increasing. Given the change in how much influence the software has on the behavior of the total system, the pressure on safer and more dependable software intensive systems has increased. However, when computers are used to control and monitor critical functions onboard vessels, new risks are introduced and the safe operation of the vessel becomes dependent on the correct behavior and availability of computers. In computer systems both hardware and software contribute their share to the risks, in this paper we primarily focus on the risks associated with software.