Forensic Engineering concerns the investigation of materials, equipment or
systems failures which have resulted in accidents or other losses. Many of the
same tools used by System Safety Engineers - Fault Tree Analysis, Failure Modes
and Effects Analysis - can be used to clarify what factors influenced an event.
Forensic Engineering is one way of "closing the loop" from the final product,
back to the company and designers who created it.
Formal Accident Investigations are a type of Forensic Engineering. Safety engineers can build their awareness of how systems and components fail by
reading accident reports on similar systems. Modern accident investigations look
beyond the immediate causes of major accidents to organizational factors which
underlies the local causes and needs to be addressed if re-occurrences are to be
prevented. Nancy Leveson's first book - Safeware - includes descriptions of several famous
accidents which every System Safety Engineer should be familiar with.
Insurance companies use a process called subrogation to pass the cost of a loss
on to the insurance company of an appliance manufacturer (for example).
Wikipedia entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subrogation
Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forensic_engineering
Wikipedia on electrical forensic engineering:
Nancy Leveson paper on the Columbia Space Shuttle loss