Disaster prevention through intelligent monitoring

Despite various tools and systems that can monitor complex engineering environments, bad things happen regularly in all types of engineering industries. An intelligent system that could monitor certain indicators no matter the complexity of the engineering industry, and could predict the potential situations that may lead to catastrophic mishaps, and could reduce loss of human life and property. In this article, 10 catastrophic mishaps were researched to identify their root causes and root cause combinations. These mishaps can be found across a broad spectrum of engineering fields, including oil, gas, nuclear, rail, air and space. The failure types identified in the investigation reports were grouped under common trait headings and their efficacy was tested using a qualitative fault tree of credible catastrophic failure scenarios. The traits were adjusted to signify various levels of failure and the prototype system readily identified their impact.