Fault tree analysis
Fault tree analysis is utilized in identifying the likely causes of failures in systems way before the said failures occur; in other words, fault trees offer a means of calculating the probability of failure scenarios, and in doing so, it adopts statistical or analytical methods. In contrast, in event tree analysis utilizes mathematical and logical techniques to determine the impact of a specific component’s failure or even a system, and works to identify the effects of its failure on the system’s overall risk or reliability. In terms of differences, the fault tree outlines the relationships among events, whereas the event tree outlines the sequence of events connected through conditional probabilities. Based on functionality, fault trees are utilized in the identification and simplification of failure scenarios. In contrast, events trees are being used in evaluating notions of continuity, such as logical, physical, and temporal. Lastly, the fault tree utilizes a deductive approach, whereas the event tree utilizes an inductive approach. As per limitations, both methods of risk prediction have distinctive downsides. In fault tree analysis, the following barriers exist – difficulty in understanding probability for event occurrence, it is tedious to construct, it poses challenges in modeling the correlation between essential events, and it is also subjective to lengthy decision making processes hindering fast implementation. For event tree analysis, the limitations include lack of multitasking as it can only address a single initiating event at a time, which further needs to be identified by an analyst, and so does the pathway. Also, it’s hard to determine the loss for each pathway as it needs further analysis to distinguish. Lastly, the probabilities of failure or success are difficult to determine