The deliberate weaknesses are points of weakness towards which a potential failure is channelled in order to limit the magnitude of the consequences from failure. The paper shows that reducing risk by deliberate weaknesses is a powerful domain-independent method which transcends mechanical engineering and works in various unrelated areas of human activity. A classification has been proposed of categories and classes of deliberate weaknesses reducing risk as well as discussion related to the underlying mechanisms of risk reduction. It is shown that introducing and repositioning existing weaknesses is an effective risk-reduction strategy which transcends engineering and can be applied in many unrelated domains. The paper shows that in the case where the cost of failure of the separate components in a system varies significantly, an approach based on deliberate weaknesses has a significant advantage to the equal-reliability/equal-strength design approach.
Todinov, Michael
School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics
Year of publication: 2020Date of RADAR deposit: 2019-07-19