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A Survey of Logic Formalisms to Support Mishap AnalysisMishap investigations provide important information about adverse events and near miss incidents. They are intended to help avoid any recurrence of previous failures. Over time, they can also yield statistical information about incident frequencies that helps to detect patterns of failure and can validate risk assessments. However, the increasing complexity of many safety critical systems is posing new challenges for mishap analysis. Similarly, the recognition that many failures have complex, systemic causes has helped to widen the scope of many mishap investigations. These two factors have combined to pose new challenges for the analysis of adverse events. A new generation of formal and semi-formal techniques have been proposed to help investigators address these problems. We introduce the term mishap logics to collectively describe these notations that might be applied to support the analysis of mishaps. The proponents of these notations have argued that they can be used to formally prove that certain events created the necessary and sufficient causes for a mishap to occur. These proofs can be used to reduce the bias that is often perceived to effect the interpretation of adverse events. Others have argued that one cannot use logic formalisms to prove causes in the same way that one might prove propositions or theorems. Such mechanisms cannot accurately capture the wealth of inductive, deductive and statistical forms of inference that investigators must use in their analysis of adverse events. This paper provides an overview of these mishap logics. It also identifies several additional classes of logic that might also be used to support mishap analysis.
Document ID
20030063019
Acquisition Source
Langley Research Center
Document Type
Reprint (Version printed in journal)
Authors
Johnson, Chris
(Glasgow Univ. United Kingdom)
Holloway, C. M.
(NASA Langley Research Center Hampton, VA, United States)
Date Acquired
August 21, 2013
Publication Date
January 1, 2003
Publication Information
Publication: Reliability Engineering and System Safety
Publisher: Elsevier Science Ltd.
Volume: 80
ISSN: 0951-8320
Subject Category
Life Sciences (General)
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Other

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