Patent ID: 8311697

Claim:
An impact assessment system for determining an impact of component failure in a complex system, the impact assessment system comprising: a processor; a memory coupled to the processor, the memory including an impact assessment program configured to be executed by the processor, the impact assessment program comprising: a component dependency model, the component dependency model describing dependency relationships between components in the complex system; and an emergent criticality analyzer, the emergent criticality analyzer configured to calculate base annunciations for previous component failures, single additional failure annunciations for the previous component failures, and double additional failure annunciations for the previous component failures, the emergent criticality analyzer further configured to receive failure data for the complex system, the failure data indicating a new component failure in the complex system, the emergent criticality analyzer further configured to determine changes in redundancy status of remaining components in the complex system to determine the impact of the new component failure on criticality of the remaining components in the complex system, and wherein the emergent criticality analyzer determines changes in the redundancy status of the remaining components in the complex system by computing base case annunciations for the new component failure, single additional failure annunciations for the new component failure, and double additional failure annunciations for the new component failure, and subtracting the base annunciations for previous component failures, the single additional failure annunciations for the previous component failures, and the double additional failure annunciations for the previous component failures.