[Updated Sept 2022] This is a list of free handbooks, guides, and textbooks covering all of the tools of system safety and probabilistic risk assessment (PRA). To the best of my knowledge, all of the resources on this page are free and legal.
We have resources covering FMEA, FTA, PRA, System Safety, Software Safety, STAMP/STPA, GSN, Bayesian methods, and Human Reliability Analysis. The resources are drawn from multiple industries, including automotive, nuclear, space, and aviation.
Failure Modes & Effects Analysis (FMEA)
Softrel Software FMEA Overview
MIL-STD 1629 Procedures for Performing FMECA
U.S. Army FMECA Guide TM5-698-4
Fault Tree Analysis (FTA)
NASA Fault Tree Handbook (overview slides)
A Fault Tree Tutorial (slides)
Building a Fault Tree from a Schematic (video tutorial)
Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA)
BSEE PRA Procedures Guide for Offshore
NUREG PRA Procedures Guide Vol 1 / Vol 2
IAEA PSA Guide Level 1 / Level 2
Guidelines on Common Cause Failures in PRA
On the Quantitative Definition of Risk
PRA: A Perspective on Strengths, Current Limitations, and Possible Improvements
System Safety
NASA System Safety Handbook Vol 1 / Vol 2
Air Force System Safety Handbook
DoD Unmanned System Safety Engineering Precepts
MIL-STD-882F System Safety (Draft)
Software Safety
Phil Koopman CMU Lectures and Course Notes (new)
NASA Software Safety Guidebook
NASA Software Assurance and Software Safety Standard
NASA Software Engineering Requirements
NASA Software Engineering and Assurance Handbook (new)
Joint Software Systems Safety Engineering Handbook
NATO AOP-52 Guidance on Software Safety
U.S. DOT Software Reliability: A Preliminary Handbook
NUREG 6463 Guidelines on Software Languages
AUTOSAR Guidelines for the use of the C++14 language
The Utility and Practicality of Quantifying Software Reliability
Handbook of Software Reliability Engineering (Book)
Bayesian Analysis
Bayesian Inference for NASA Probabilistic Risk and Reliability Analysis
Handbook of Parameter Estimation for Probabilistic Risk Assessment
Doing Bayesian Data Analysis (Book)
Bayesian Data Analysis 3rd edition (Book) (new)
Statistical Rethinking (Book, website) (new)
Bayesian Networks
A Tutorial on Learning Bayesian Networks
Understanding Bayesian Networks (Slides)
Bayesian networks: A guide for their application…
Product safety idioms: a method for building causal BNs… (new)
Github: Bayesian Network based Fault Tree and Event Tree Analysis tool (new)
Bayesian Reasoning and Machine Learning (Book)
Learning Bayesian Networks (Book)
STAMP / STPA
STAMP/STPA Beginner Introduction
A New Accident Model for Engineering Safer Systems
Engineering a Safer World (Book)
Safety Cases and GSN
GSN Community Standard ver 3 / ver 2
UL 4600 (draft) Autonomous Systems Safety
Adelard Safety Case Development Manual (free registration)
Civil Aviation CAP 760 Guidance on Safety Cases
Reliability Engineering
MIL-HDBK-338B Electronic Reliability Design Handbook
Reliability Design Handbook (1976)
Probability Distributions Used in Reliability Engineering
DuPont Root Cause Analysis Handbook (new)
Reliability Engineering by Kapur & Pecht (book)
Human Reliability Analysis (new section)
Fifty Years of THERP and Human Reliability Analysis
Human Reliability Analysis Methods: Selection Guidance for NASA
UK HSE Review of Human Reliability Assessment Methods
NUREG Handbook of Human Reliability Analysis (THERP)
NUREG The SPAR-H Human Reliability Analysis Method
US NRC Human Reliability Analysis (HRA) Training Course
More To Come…
That should keep you busy for a while! This page will be updated periodically with fun new stuff. Please leave a comment if there are any great resources I left off.
Check out our other FunctionalSafetyEngineer posts, including Automotive Functional Safety Certification and Intro to ISO 26262.
Wondering how to get failure data for quantitative risk assessment? Check out our popular post on where to find failure data.
This is a brilliant set of resources – many thanks !
great resources, many thanks!
Great resources
The URL for CAP670 is incorrect; it should be https://www.caa.co.uk/cap760 Note that the GSN example therein leaves a bit to be desired…
Another great reference for software safety is https://www.caa.co.uk/cap670
Wow excellent source of safety knowledge