Katkoksensietoon

Katkoksensietoon is a term used in resilience studies to describe the capacity of a system or person to endure interruptions and continue functioning with minimal degradation. The term is a compound of Finnish katkos (interruptions) and sieto (tolerance). It is used primarily in theoretical discussions and some applied contexts in Finnish-language literature to describe interruption tolerance as a distinct property from robustness or fault tolerance.

Applications of katkoksensietoon span information technology, industrial engineering, and cognitive psychology. In IT and networks, it refers to the ability to withstand disruptions through redundancy, asynchronous processing, checkpointing, and graceful degradation. In organizational and human factors research, it describes how individuals or teams maintain performance amid interruptions or context switches.

Measurement and assessment typically involve both quantitative and qualitative indicators. Metrics may include time to recover (TTR), resilience index, and mean time between interruption and return to normal operation, supplemented by assessments of degradation depth and recovery quality. Experimental methods include fault injection, load stress testing, and scenario-based simulations to evaluate interruption tolerance under varied conditions.

Design principles to improve katkoksensietoon include modular architecture, decoupled components, asynchronous communication, idempotent operations, proactive monitoring, and clearly defined recovery procedures. Human-centered practices such as process design, task sequencing, and training also contribute to higher interruption tolerance in workflows.

Criticism and discussion emphasize that katkoksensietoon overlaps with broader concepts like resilience, fault tolerance, and business continuity. Some argue that without standardized metrics, the term risks vagueness; others advocate developing harmonized criteria to enable cross-domain comparison.

See also: resilience, fault tolerance, business continuity, graceful degradation.