Quantitative system risk assessment from incomplete data with belief networks and pairwise comparison elicitation

A method for conducting Bayesian elicitation and learning in risk assessment is presented. It assumes that the risk process can be described as a fault tree. This is viewed as a belief network, for which prior distributions on primary event probabilities are elicited by means of a pairwise comparison approach. A Bayesian updating procedure, following observation of some or all of the events in the fault tree, is described. The application is illustrated through the motivating example of risk assessment of spacecraft explosion during controlled re-entry.