Engineering Governance Through the Provision of Intelligent Monitoring Systems

Abstract

Engineering Governance Through the Provision of Intelligent Monitoring Systems 

by A.D. Painting and D. Sanders

This paper describes the development of an intelligent monitoring system to monitor and predict potential situations that may, in the future, lead to a catastrophe. Based on documented lessons learned from past significant catastrophic incidents, the combinations of failures that have led to disasters can be grouped under three distinct engineering governance headings of “people,” “process” and “tools.” The intelligence uses data mining software to detect patterns in the collected information. The predictive capability is enhanced using trend analysis — and through the adaptation of this information using pre-processors — to find the type and amount of variance necessary to create a recognizable warning pattern. The type of information to collect and the particular data mining tools to use will be the subject of further research and testing.

Journal of systems safety (2011), vol 47(1), pages 15-21