Real Life Perspectives

This introductory section demonstrates that techniques to prevent, detect and diagnose system failures are needed and used throughout the system life cycle, from early design through field trouble shooting. Papers emphasize the breadth and depth of diagnostic methods that are used in system development, operation and maintenance for human detection and diagnosis of system failures. It is easy to infer from these papers that almost any complex system one might imagine is a candidate user of such methodology, as will be shown by the progression of applications from nuclear power plants to accident appraisals, to software development, and on day-to-day operation and maintenance.