Model-based safety analysis: definitions, challenges and implications

Model-based safety Analysis (MBSA) has evolved since the 1990s to support safety engineering in industries such as aerospace, transportation, aviation, mining, defence and nuclear power plants. By embedding modelling languages, analytical techniques and standards directly into the development lifecycle of safety-critical systems (SCSs), MBSA enhances reliability and safety risk management of those systems. Although prior reviews have traced its historical evolution, a consolidated overview of recent advances across sectors remains limited. This article presents a structured and systematic literature review (SLR) of MBSA research published between 2000 and 2025, based on a curated dataset of 773 peer-reviewed articles retrieved from Scopus, Web of Science, IEEE Xplore and ScienceDirect. The review analyses MBSA developments across key sectors, including aerospace and aviation, automotive, rail and transportation, nuclear and process industries and industrial control systems. This article examines the MBSA, including its history, key techniques, tools, standards and some of its applications in various industries. Several techniques, processes, tools and frameworks have been analysed based on their applicability to different industries, syntactic and semantic complexity and usability. Four core themes have been explored through an extensive review of over 700 articles: (1) SCSs (2) System safety (SS) techniques (3) MBSA overview (4) MBSA techniques, Modelling Languages and Tools. These themes have been selected to provide a structured approach to exploring the multifaceted domain of SS and MBSA. The specific order forms a logical and cohesive flow, each building complementing the previous one, creating a comprehensive overview of the MBSA. The themes introduce safety-related systems in general and analyse their relationship to safety analysis techniques. Then, they follow with an in-depth review of SS and MBSA techniques, tools, and processes.