The Mitigation Strategy Taxonomy: Organizing and Classifying Risk Mitigation Strategies

The objective of this paper is to introduce the risk mitigation strategy taxonomy and demonstrate how it can link failure modes of a product to mitigation strategies, and then use those strategies along with failure mode models to refine the strategy for a given product. While models for failure modes are readily available in scientific textbooks and journals, a specific guideline for implementing product changes related to these models to reduce failures (i.e. mitigations) does not yet exist. Currently, most risk mitigation techniques rely on the expertise of the engineers on their team. The risk mitigation strategy taxonomy seeks to improve this situation by providing a set of mitigation strategies that can be easily linked to failure modes a product may experience. This taxonomy is created from an empirical collection of mitigation strategies used in industry for failure mitigation, storing the data in a consistent format that allows it to be used for future risk mitigation. By using this taxonomy, an engineer can supplement his experience with historical mitigation data and more effectively mitigate risk