Subjective Criticality Importance of the Fundamental Events to the Top Event in Fault Tree

Abstract

A procedure is proposed which can subjectively estimate the relative occurrence probability of each fundamental event in fault tree by applying a pairwise comparison method. The proposed procedure could be applied to calculate the subjective criticality importance for the fundamental event. Consequently, it is possible to estimate the effect of the variation in the occurrence probability of each fundamental event on the variation in occurrence probability of top event, even if some of probability data for fundamental event should be lacking.