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Software Architecture Guide

Risk Identification and Safe Integration

Explanation

Section titled “Explanation”

Both ideas are sub-characteristics of Safety in ISO/IEC 25010. See the articles on Safety and the ISO/IEC 25010 Product Quality Model for the wider picture.

Safety itself means avoiding states in which human life, health, property or the environment is endangered. This applies under defined conditions.

Risk identification

Risk identification is the ability to identify courses of events or operations that can expose life, property or the environment to unacceptable risk. The word “unacceptable” matters. The idea does not cover every possible risk. It covers risks that cross a line someone has defined.

Safe integration

Safe integration is the ability to keep safety intact when the product is combined with one or more other components. The definition covers two moments: during integration and after it. So safety is not a one-time check at the moment of connecting. It must still hold in the combined system afterward.

For the general topic of joining components, see the article on Integration.

How they fit together

Risk identification asks what could go wrong. Safe integration asks whether safety survives when parts are joined. A team can treat both as quality goals and write them down like other qualities.

Example

Section titled “Example”

A team builds a monitoring unit for a chemical storage room. It must recognize events that could endanger staff or the building. That is a risk identification goal.

Later, the team connects the unit to a building alarm system from another vendor. They ask two questions. Does safety hold while the connection is made? Does it still hold once both systems run together? The second question is the one that is easy to forget.

Checks

Section titled “Checks”
  • The document states which events or operations could expose life, property or the environment to unacceptable risk.
  • Safety expectations are stated for both the integration moment and the system after integration.
  • The conditions under which safety must hold are defined.
Section titled “Related”

Sources

Section titled “Sources”
  • ISO 25010 — iso25000.com, accessed 2026-11-09