Webinar on SW&AEH EASA-FAA Task Force ‘Abstraction Layer’

The European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) have agreed on a set of criteria to allow the industry to accept alternate development assurance standards for software and airborne electronic hardware (SW&AEH) certification.

The level of safety of aviation products is currently established via the guidance in aviation SW&AEH standards, i.e. ED-12C/DO-178C and ED-80/DO-254 respectively, as well as via aspects of ARP-4754A. The aviation-specific and comprehensive nature of the development assurance approach in this guidance may present a barrier to the adoption of new technologies.

The aim of the EASA-FAA Task Force ‘Abstraction Layer’ (TFAL) was to identify ways to develop means to assess available standards or publicly available methodologies without compromising the high safety standard of aviation, through the definition of an ‘Abstraction Layer’. The objective of the TFAL was to develop the ‘Abstraction Layer’ by extracting the key concepts from ED-12C/DO-178C, ED-80/DO-254, EASA & FAA A(M)C 20-115D, and EASA & FAA A(M)C 20-152A. It subsequently formulated a set of 20 criteria for the assessment of the candidate alternate standard.

In this webinar, the TFAL team will:

• present the EASA-FAA Task Force (TFAL), and summarise its activities and main results;
• provide a detailed presentation of the ‘Abstraction Layer’ (AL) criteria;
• present the ‘User Guide” associated to the AL;
• give some examples of typical usage of the AL;
• show how the AL could be considered in the EASA-FAA regulatory framework; and
• provide the framework for recognition of alternate standards assessed using the AL.

The webinar will be recorded and made available after the event at this webpage.

For providing your questions and input already before the event, use SLIDO (event code: #2106363, passcode: qi5vcz).