Details of Grant 

EPSRC Reference:	GR/R81503/01
Title:	Variable Orderings for Binary Decision Diagrams
Principal Investigator:	Jackson, Professor L
Other Investigators:
Researcher Co-Investigators:
Project Partners:
Department:	School of Mathematics
Organisation:	Loughborough University
Scheme:	Fast Stream
Starts:	09 September 2002	Ends:	08 March 2004	Value (£):	62,053
EPSRC Research Topic Classifications:	Mathematical Aspects of OR
EPSRC Industrial Sector Classifications:	No relevance to Underpinning Sectors
Related Grants:
Panel History:
Summary on Grant Application Form
The traditional risk and reliability assessment technique is Fault Tree Analysis. This technique has limitations when dealing with large industrial systems. The most recent development to improve these limitations is the Binary Decision Diagram (BDD) approach. When the fault tree is transformed to the necessary format the BDD analysis procedure is more efficient for qualitative analysis and more accurate for quantification. The transformation process is sometimes problematic, in that the resulting diagram is not minimal in size, which detracts from the benefits of using this alternative approach. To transform the fault tree the basic events need to be taken in an ordering and I is this which is crucial to the resulting size of the BDD. There is currently no single ordering heuristic that will guarantee a minimal BDD for any given fault tree. Solving this ordering problem would promote a more accurate and efficient risk and relaibility analysis of large industrial systems where previously approximations were used, which would lead to more educated design alterations to current operating practice. This proposed research project is concerned with resolving the conversion process difficulty by developing a heuristic that is considerably better than any currently available. This is to be achieved by examining different ordering heuristics, initially focussing on a ranking system based on the contribution each basic event within the fault tree makes to the top event occurrence. Work will also involve combinatorial approaches, and in addition will consider solutions for non-coherent fault trees.
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Organisation Website:	http://www.lboro.ac.uk