Patent ID: 8285438

Claim:
A method for analyzing a complex system comprising a number of subsystems, wherein each subsystem comprises at least one sensor designed to generate sensor data, the method comprising: processing sensor data from at least one of the sensors to generate binary evidence of a sensed event; processing sensor data from at least one of the sensors to generate complex evidence of a sensed event, wherein the complex evidence has more sophisticated mathematical properties than the binary evidence, wherein the complex evidence comprises at least one of: a condition indicator (CI), a health indicator (HI), and a prognostic indicator (PI); providing a system fault model (SFM) that defines statistical relationships between binary evidence, complex evidence, and an underlying failure mode (FM) that is occurring in the complex system; processing via a processer the binary evidence and the complex evidence to identify failure modes taking place within one or more of the subsystems; and generating, based on the binary evidence and the complex evidence and the SFM, diagnostic conclusions regarding adverse events that are taking place within the complex system, and prognostic conclusions regarding adverse events that are predicted to take place within the complex system.