# Towards Automated Safety Requirements Derivation Using Agent-based RAG

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.11243 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.11243/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Multimodal RAG, one of 15 directions in Retrieval-augmented generation.
- Builds on 11 of its 23 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 15 Apr 2025.

## Placed in

- Retrieval-augmented generation / [Multimodal RAG](https://mlsanity.com/rag/multimodal-rag/)
- LLM agents and tool use / [Agent threats, guardrails and governance](https://mlsanity.com/agents/agent-threats-guardrails-and-governance/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 11 of 11)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Knowledge-Intensive NLP Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.11401/) (2020)
- [BERTScore: Evaluating Text Generation with BERT](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.09675/) (2019)
- [REALM: Retrieval-Augmented Language Model Pre-Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.08909/) (2020)
- [Improving language models by retrieving from trillions of tokens](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.04426/) (2021)
- [Leveraging Passage Retrieval with Generative Models for Open Domain Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.01282/) (2020)
- [Large Language Models Are Human-Level Prompt Engineers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.01910/) (2022)
- [Multi-Agent Collaboration: Harnessing the Power of Intelligent LLM Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.03314/) (2023)
- [Safety Analysis in the Era of Large Language Models: A Case Study of STPA using ChatGPT](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.01246/) (2023)
- [A Collaborative Multi-Agent Approach to Retrieval-Augmented Generation Across Diverse Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.05838/) (2024)
- [Concept-Guided LLM Agents for Human-AI Safety Codesign](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.15317/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [From Safety Documentation to Safety Knowledge Support: An Evidence-Grounded LLM Framework for Medical Devices](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.12025/) (2026)
- [Context operations to architecture modelling output from large language models and evaluation criteria for their use in systems engineering design](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.10132/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We study the automated derivation of safety requirements in a self-driving vehicle use case, leveraging LLMs in combination with agent-based retrieval-augmented generation. Conventional approaches that utilise pre-trained LLMs to assist in safety analyses typically lack domain-specific knowledge. Existing RAG approaches address this issue, yet their performance deteriorates when handling complex queries and it becomes increasingly harder to retrieve the most relevant information. This is particularly relevant for safety-relevant applications. In this paper, we propose the use of agent-based RAG to derive safety requirements and show that the retrieved information is more relevant to the queries. We implement an agent-based approach on a document pool of automotive standards and the Apollo case study, as a representative example of an automated driving perception system. Our solution is tested on a data set of safety requirement questions and answers, extracted from the Apollo data. Evaluating a set of selected RAG metrics, we present and discuss advantages of a agent-based approach compared to default RAG methods.