Methods for Estimating Parameters of the Common Cause Failure Model Based on Data with Uncertainty

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a new method to deal with uncertain data in the context of Common Cause Failure (CCF) analysis. Uncertain CCF data refer to the data for which the number of components involved in the failure events is not exactly known. We introduce a new formalism to describe uncertain CCF data to avoid subjective probabilities for the number of failed components in each CCF event that are used in classical methods such as the impact vector method. The parameters of the [Formula: see text]-factor model are estimated using the maximum likelihood method relying on properties of the nested Dirichlet distribution and grouped Dirichlet distribution. A data augmentation technique with an expectation-maximization algorithm is also developed for some schemes of data with uncertainty. Finally, we evaluate the performance of the proposed method through numerical simulations and illustrate its application using an example from the literature.