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As product-line engineering becomes more widespread, more safety-critical software product lines are being built. This paper describes a structured method for performing safety analysis on a software product line, building on standard product-line assets: product-line requirements, architecture, and scenarios. The safety-analysis method is bi-directional in that it combines a forward analysis (from failure modes to effects) with a backward analysis (from hazards to contributing causes). Safety-analysis results are converted to XML files to allow automated consistency checking between the forward and backward analysis results and to support reuse of the safety-analysis results throughout the product line. The paper demonstrates and evaluates the method on a safety-critical product-line subsystem, the Door Control System. Results show that the bi-directional safety-analysis method found both missing and incorrect …