Title
A Computational Framework for Prioritization of Events in Fault Tree Analysis Under Interval-Valued Probabilities
Abstract
In probabilistic safety assessment (PSA), the assessed events can be prioritized using risk importance measures, which are functions of the events' failure probabilities. These probabilities can be uncertain, and consequently the resulting prioritization can be uncertain too. In this paper, we present a framework for computing the impacts of this uncertainty, which is modeled by interval-valued probabilities that establish lower and upper bounds, within which the probability may vary. Specifically, we make pairwise comparisons between events so that an event is said to dominate another if its risk importance measure is at least as high for all event probabilities that are within their respective intervals, and strictly higher for some probabilities. The dominance relations establish a partial order which can be visualized as a directed acyclic graph. We illustrate our method by analyzing the fault tree that represents the residual heat removal system of a nuclear reactor. The results for this fault tree with 31 events and 147 minimal cut sets was solved in seconds using a tailored algorithm. Theoretical properties of the algorithm suggest that much larger models can still be solved in reasonable time.
Year
DOI
Venue
2013
10.1109/TR.2013.2270401
IEEE Transactions on Reliability
Keywords
Field
DocType
directed graphs,fault trees,fission reactor cooling,fission reactor safety,fission reactor theory,probability,risk management,set theory,PSA,computational framework,directed acyclic graph,dominance relations,event failure probabilities,event prioritization,fault tree analysis,interval-valued probabilities,lower bounds,minimal cut sets,nuclear reactor,probabilistic safety assessment,residual heat removal system,risk importance measurement,upper bounds,Epistemic uncertainty,fault tree analysis,interval-valued probability,prioritization,probabilistic safety assessment
Residual,Pairwise comparison,Event tree,Directed graph,Directed acyclic graph,Probabilistic logic,Fault tree analysis,Statistics,Event tree analysis,Reliability engineering,Mathematics
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
62
3
0018-9529
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
2
0.38
19
Authors
2
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Antti Toppila151.13
Ahti Salo244534.14