The SISTER Approach for Verification and Validation: A Lightweight Process for Reusable Results

The research project SISTER aims to improve the safety and autonomy of light rail trains by developing and integrating novel technologies for remote sensing and object detection, safe positioning, and broadband radio communication. To prove safety of the SISTER solution, CENELEC-compliant Verification and Validation (V&V) is obviously required. In the SISTER project, we tackled the challenge of defining and applying a compact V&V methodology, able to provide convincing safety evidence on the solution, but still within the reduced resources available for the project. A relevant characteristic of the methodology is to produce V&V results that can be reused for future industrial exploitation of SISTER outcomes after project termination. This paper presents the V&V methodology that is currently applied in parallel to the progress of project activities, with preliminary results from its application.