Professor Marsha Chechik is among a team of researchers recognized with the 2023 Scientific Achievement Award from the International System Safety Society. (Photo: J.P. Moczulski)
A team of international researchers that includes Professor Marsha Chechik and PhD student Torin Viger has been recognized for its assurance case argument for the Machine Protection System of the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC).
The researchers recently received the 2023 Scientific Achievement Award from the International System Safety Society (ISSS).
The award is presented to an individual or group that has made significant contributions to the advancement of system safety through research and development programs.
Chechik and Viger collaborated with researchers from Critical Systems Labs (CSL), McMaster University and the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN).
“I am very grateful to my colleagues at CERN for engaging with us and our industry partner CSL in building a real — and yet publicly available — assurance case,” says Chechik. “This example aims to facilitate safety research and promote safety practice. The award is the testament that our work will have academic, scientific and industrial impact.”
The Large Hadron Collider is the world’s largest particle accelerator, consisting of a 27-kilometre ring of superconducting magnets that increases the energy of two particle beams until they reach almost light speed, and makes them collide for experiments. These collisions are performed to test theories and investigate unanswered questions in particle physics. The resulting high-energy particle beams could damage the system if their paths were to become unstable. The Machine Protection System (MPS) is designed to ensure the Large Hadron Collider does not become damaged during operation due to unstable particles. It is therefore of paramount importance that the MPS ensures the safety of the collider.
Assurance cases are structured arguments built for regulators to show why safety-critical systems are safe and will reliably function in their operating environment. The team developed a medium-size assurance case argument for the MPS expressed using Eliminative Argumentation. It was created in approximately three months, validated through collaboration with CERN experts and is publicly available. It consists of 509 nodes of different types, including 146 claim nodes and 105 defeaters.
The results of this collaboration demonstrated to CERN safety experts the benefits of building structured assurance cases for their system. The resulting assurance case is available to researchers and practitioners in industry and academia, Chechik notes.
“To the best of our knowledge, it is the largest openly accessible assurance case,” she adds. “Engaging in the process also taught my PhD student, Torin Viger, about assurance case creation ‘in the large,’ including working with experts from the nuclear domain.”
Featured image of the Large Hadron Collider by Maximilien Brice: CERN