Probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) is a methodology consisting of techniques to assess the probability of failure or success of a system. It has been proven to be a systematic, logical, and comprehensive methodology for risk assessment. However, the contribution of software to risk has not been well studied. To address this shortcoming, recent research has focused on the development of an approach to systematically integrate software risk contributions into the PRA framework. The latter research has identified as key the need to quantify various major software-failure-related contributions to risk. Of these contributions, the quantification of input failures is the topic of this paper. An input failure consists of a failure of a system component directly or indirectly connected to a software component, which reaches the software input and propagates through the software component. The paper studies and quantifies the impact of input failures on the software component and then further on in the system, and outlines a framework to systematically conduct such an analysis. An application to a safety-critical system is also provided that illustrates the application of the concepts introduced in the paper.
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