From fault trees to fuzzy relations in managing heuristics for technical diagnosis

A generic possibilistic framework for embracing through fuzzy relations the causal-abductive duality co-existent within the diagnostic information is proposed. As a challenge of the classical fault tree analysis, the proposed approach overpasses the main limitations of the restrictive framework of reliability theory by processing linguistic expert knowledge through the deterministic trees. On a very simple example it is illustrated on how fuzzy relations represent an excellent tool for unified integration of heuristic diagnostic information, as a basis for managing complex diagnostic situations via approximate reasoning