Common-mode failures have thus far been considerably overlooked in reliability studies. By their definition, common-mode failures correlate heavily, breaking the assumption of probabilistic independence. This article describes how monitoring a live, largescale network infrastructure provides a realistic environment for analyzing common-mode failures, while also introducing new problems not imme...

Sewer line failures are a major cause of stream impairment in urban areas. While many sewer line failures can be readily identified and corrected, other failures may be more difficult to remedy. This paper examines the general problem of sewer line failures. Specifically, we discuss 1) the observed causes of sewer line failures, 2) methods for determining which streams are being affected by sew...

Third, error logging and reporting is important. As an industry, we currently support very primitive logging with no mechanisms for root-cause analysis or correlation of failures. Error messages are often arcane or not useful, and “firstfailure” capture is impossible. This is evidenced by a common, though unrealistic, request from support center staff: “Turn logging on and recreate the failure....

Abstract: This paper presents a mathematical model to perform availability analysis of a robot-safety system having n-redundant robots and m-redundant built-in safety units with common-cause failures. The system failure rates and the partially failed system repair rates are assumed constant, and the failed system repair time is assumed arbitrarily distributed. The supplementary variable method ...

Background: Adverse Events (AEs) due to failure in healthcare procedures are common. These procedures are often evaluated independently. The objectives of this study are to investigate the nature of the failures in healthcare procedures of the surgical patients, assessing the frequency of these failures and preventability, and exploring their consequences, underlying causes, and prevention stra...

SYNOPSIS This paper describes some of the latest developments in the use of Emergency Shut Down Systems in process installations both onshore and offshore. The safety implications of these developments are discussed. The effects of common cause failures and human factors with examples of accidents are described. The assessment of systems against HSE Guidelines, industry standards and future int...

Observers were asked to select, from a grid of 16 achromatic Munsell chips presented on a white background in bright illumination, a sample to match a light gray chip simultaneously presented on the same white background but in a shadowed region adjacent to the brightly illuminated region. The border dividing the two fields of illumination was made to appear as either a reflec-tance edge or an ...

Common failures in predicting crystal structures of ligand-protein complexes are investigated for three ligand-protein systems by a combined thermodynamic and kinetic analysis of the binding energy landscapes. Misdocked predictions in ligand-protein docking are classified as 'soft' and 'hard' failures. While a soft failure arises when the search algorithm is unable to find the global energy min...