How does functional safety apply to systems preventing environmental damage or severe financial loss?
Section 3.1 of IEC61508-4 defines safety as “freedom from unacceptable risk of physical injury or damage to the health of people, either directly or indirectly as a result of damage to property to the environment”. In cases where a failure will involve serious economic or environment implications, IEC 61508 can be used to specify any E/E/PE system used for protection.
Hazard and risk analysis will determine particular safety functions and the required levels of performance for the function. The safety parameters defining the consequences for the hazard and risk analysis can be replaced with environmental or financial parameters to determine the risk of environmental or financial hazards.