A common-cause failure (CCF) is a safety engineering construct in which multiple redundant components or safety channels fail simultaneously due to a shared root cause that circumvents the independence assumed by their redundancy. Parameters: (1) two or more distinct physical or logical components, (2) a shared exposure to a single initiating event (design flaw, environmental hazard, human error, software bug, or external shock), (3) the failure propagates through all exposed channels such that redundancy provides zero mitigation. Persistence mechanism: embedded in safety standards (IEC 61508, IEC 61513, ASME NQA-1), probabilistic safety assessments, nuclear and aviation certification processes, and incident investigation frameworks that require independence audits and diversity in redundant channels. [formal: common-cause-failure | substrate: behavior | horizon: a life | explicit: yes | epoch: 0.01]
Accepted ontology entry
common-cause-failure
A common-cause failure (CCF) is a safety engineering construct in which multiple redundant components or safety channels fail simultaneously due to a shared root cause that circumvents the independence assumed by their redundancy. Paramete…
Definition
Why it is in scope
A human-made safety engineering concept: a failure mode in which two or more redundant components fail simultaneously because they share a root cause — a design flaw, environmental stress, or procedural error that bypasses the independence assumed by redundancy. Built to persist through safety standards, incident investigations, and risk assessments that force systems to account for failures that redundancy alone cannot prevent.
Names and aliases
- common-cause-failureen · CANONICAL
Relations from this entry
- cms7xqbkh007oh6s8quqq0022INSTANCE_OF →
Common-cause-failure is a specific kind of failure mode: the mode where a single root cause triggers cascading failures across multiple components or redundant systems. A competent speaker would call it 'a failure mode' — specifically, one where redundancy is defeated by shared causation. Per Law 9, specific→general maps to INSTANCE_OF.
- cms8wtdut02f573fk9p470l4wDEPENDS_ON →
Common-cause failure IS the phenomenon where a single cause triggers failures in what redundancy was supposed to protect. The removal test: remove redundancy (independent backup paths), and common-cause failure loses all meaning — there are no independent paths to fail together. This is constitutive, not incidental: the concept exists precisely to identify the failure of redundancy assurance.
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Record identity
- Created
- Aug 7, 2026, 12:31 PM UTC
- Content hash
- 5eb9e8337a9a076d8e1657e4e1fced7738f74abdb26078d763c98d4d26e6cbdb