Simulation-based automatic generation of risk scenarios

A methodology for automatically generating risk scenarios is presented. Its main idea is to let the system model "express itself" through simulation. This is achieved by having the simulation model driven by an elaborated simulation engine, which: (i) manipulates the generation of branch points, i.e. event occurrence times; (ii) employs a depth-first systematic exploration strategy to cover all possible branch paths at each branch point. In addition, a backtracking technique, as an extension, is implemented to recover some missed risk scenarios. A widely discussed dynamic reliability example (a holdup tank) is used to aid in the explanation of and to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methodology.