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Forensic Engineering
Forensic Engineering concerns the investigation of materials, equipment or
systems failures which have resulted in accidents or other losses. Many of the same tools used by System Safety Engineers - Fault Tree Analysis, Failure Modes and Effects Analysis - can be used to clarify what factors influenced an event. Forensic Engineering is one way of "closing the loop" from the final product, back to the company and designers who created it. Formal Accident Investigations are a type of Forensic Engineering. Safety engineers can build their awareness of how systems and components fail by reading accident reports on similar systems. Modern accident investigations look beyond the immediate causes of major accidents to organizational factors which underlies the local causes and needs to be addressed if re-occurrences are to be prevented. Nancy Leveson's first book - Safeware - includes descriptions of several famous accidents which every System Safety Engineer should be familiar with. Insurance companies use a process called subrogation to pass the cost of a loss on to the insurance company of an appliance manufacturer (for example). Wikipedia entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subrogation Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forensic_engineering Wikipedia on electrical forensic engineering: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forensic_electrical_engineering http://www.efiglobal.com/efi_global_news_events/news_press_111505.shtml http://www.exponent.com/ http://proclarus.com/ Nancy Leveson paper on the Columbia Space Shuttle loss |