Faalrisicos

Faalrisicos, often translated as failure risks, denotes the set of risks tied to potential failures within a process, system, or organization. The concept covers the likelihood of a failure and the magnitude of its consequences, including safety, reliability, and performance impacts. Faalrisicos address not only single-point failures but also cascading failures and systemic vulnerabilities arising from interactions among components.

The term appears to derive from Dutch faalrisico's, where faal means failure and risico means risk. In English-language risk literature the exact term is uncommon; the concept is typically discussed under operational risk, reliability engineering, or resilience studies. Different fields define scope differently, but the aim is consistent: anticipate, quantify, and mitigate failures.

Assessment of faalrisicos combines identification of failure modes, estimation of likelihood, evaluation of consequences, and review of detection and mitigation controls. Methods include failure mode and effects analysis, fault tree analysis, and bow-tie analysis, complemented by probabilistic risk assessment. Metrics such as failure rate and risk matrices help prioritize interventions.

Faalrisicos matter in manufacturing, software development, energy, healthcare, and critical infrastructure. A typical example is a factory line where motor or software faults, or supply disruptions, halt production and create safety, quality, or environmental risks.

Mitigation emphasizes reducing probability and impact through reliability-focused design, redundancy, preventive maintenance, real-time monitoring, and incident response planning. Organizational resilience through training, scenario planning, and supplier risk management also helps prevent cascading faalrisicos.