Probability and Confidence Trade-space (PACT) Evaluation: Accounting for Uncertainty in Sparing Assessments.

摘要

There are two general shortcomings to the current annual sparing assessment: 1. The vehicle functions are currently assessed according to confidence targets, which can be misleading-overly conservative or optimistic. 2. The current confidence levels are arbitrarily determined and do not account for epistemic uncertainty (lack of knowledge) in the ORU failure rate. There are two major categories of uncertainty that impact Sparing Assessment: (a) Aleatory Uncertainty: Natural variability in distribution of actual failures around an Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) (b) Epistemic Uncertainty: Lack of knowledge about the true value of an Orbital Replacement Unit's (ORU) MTBF We propose an approach to revise confidence targets and account for both categories of uncertainty, an approach we call Probability and Confidence Trade-space (PACT) evaluation.