  Automated vehicles (AVs) are expected to increase traffic safety and traffic
efficiency, among others by enabling flexible mobility-on-demand systems. This
is particularly important in Singapore, being one of the world's most densely
populated countries, which is why the Singaporean authorities are currently
actively facilitating the deployment of AVs. As a consequence, however, the
need arises for a formal AV road approval procedure. To this end, a safety
assessment framework is proposed, which combines aspects of the standardized
functional safety design methodology with a traffic scenario-based approach.
The latter involves using driving data to extract AV-relevant traffic
scenarios. The underlying approach is based on decomposition of scenarios into
elementary events, subsequent scenario parametrization, and sampling of the
estimated probability density functions of the scenario parameters to create
test scenarios. The resulting test scenarios are subsequently employed for
virtual testing in a simulation environment and physical testing on a proving
ground and in real life. As a result, the proposed assessment pipeline thus
provides statistically relevant and quantitative measures for the AV
performance in a relatively short time frame due to the simulation-based
approach. Ultimately, the proposed methodology provides authorities with a
formal road approval procedure for AVs. In particular, the proposed methodology
will support the Singaporean Land Transport Authority for road approval of AVs.
