Event-sequence analysis - It's how you think!

Event-sequence analysis is an innovative-some might say radical-alternative to fault-tree analysis and Markovchain analysis for analyzing system safety and reliability. It is particularly useful when analyzing systems which might experience mutually-related failures. Event-sequence analyses are also more intuitive and natural both to create and to interpret, and they can be composed on a word processor. A disadvantage of event-sequence analysis relative to fault-tree analysis is that, because event-sequence analysis more closely reflects real life, both its logic and its failure-probability calculations are more complex. Three approximations are presented which allow failure probabilities to be determined easily, but still with acceptably small errors on the: conservative side for safety and reliability analyses. Event-sequence analysis is a powerful alternative for performing risk analyses, both probabilistic and non-probabilistic.