Virhekanavia

Virhekanavia is a concept used in systems engineering and information theory to describe the channels within a complex system through which errors or faults propagate from one component to others, potentially degrading overall performance. The term is Finnish in origin, formed from virhe "error" and kanavia "channels". It is not a formal standardized term, but it appears in technical writings and discussions in contexts such as software architecture, cyber-physical systems, and manufacturing processes.

In practice, virhekanavia may include communication links that transmit corrupted data, interfaces that fail to isolate faults, or control paths that amplify disturbances. Analyzing virhekanavia helps identify critical points where fault containment or redundancy should be implemented. Approaches to study virhekanavia include fault injection experiments, network-theoretic models, and reliability block diagrams.

Implications for design include implementing fault isolation, monitoring, and error detection, as well as strategies for graceful degradation and recovery. The term is typically used as a descriptive concept rather than a formal measurement, and it is often discussed alongside related tools such as fault tree analysis and dependency graphs.