Visual Figaro Files

This directory contains information about the main EDF tools needed to perform automated reliability studies (and more generally, automated dependability studies).
- With VisualFigaro, you can build knowledge bases (i.e. libraries of components) for KB3
- With KB3 and one of the sample knowledge bases readily available here, or with a knowledge base of your own, you can build dependability models (fault-trees, CTMC (continuous time Markov chains), Petri nets, reliability block diagrams, BDMP (Boolean logic Driven Markov Processes)
- You can then interactively simulate your models, use them to generate automatically fault-trees, export the models in Figaro language for processing by external tools
- When you are satisfied with your model, it is time to process it in order to calculate probabilities of events like the system failure, estimate random variable distributions (cost, production etc.), discover the main failure scenarios in terms of minimal cut sets or sequences etc. You can do that with a variety of tools:

     1) with YAMS (this tool is totally free) you can run a Monte Carlo Simulation on your model in order to obtain quantitative results: reliability, availability, performability, main sequences leading to a failure state etc.
     2) with the tool RiskSpectrum provided by Lloyd's Register (https://www.lr.org/en/riskspectrum/) or the tool Tree provided by SATODEV (http://grif-workshop.com/grif/tree-module/) you can process fault-trees automatically generated by KB3 to obtain the probability of the top event, importance factors, minimal cut sets etc.
     3) with the tool Figseq developed by EDF, you can compute the reliability and asymptotic availability of a very large Markov model (such as the model specified by a BDMP) and discover the most probable sequences leading to the failure of the system. Note that Figseq is reserved for EDF internal use.

All these processing tools can be connected to KB3 in such a way that the user can seamlessly pass from the building of models in KB3 to their processing.

You will find lots of articles showing the power of these tools in diverse applications on Marc Bouissou's page on Research Gate: http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Marc_Bouissou