Reliability Estimation for Stochastic Flow Networks With Dependent Arcs

The creation and the destruction processes (CPs and DPs) are the basis of many efficient Monte Carlo methods for estimating the unreliability of highly reliable networks on both, the static and the stochastic flow network models, for the case of independent components. Some of these methods are based on the splitting variance reduction techniques. Due to the splitting basic mechanism, they operate over CP. Here, we propose a splitting-based Monte Carlo method, using the Marshall–Olkin copula for the case of nonindependent components. This proposal operates on the DP, because the Marshall–Olkin copula model over networks is quite related—and somehow similar—to DP, which is unusual but here necessary. Before addressing the proposal, the article presents a review of the methods based on CP and DP. At the end, a comparative experimental analysis shows the efficiency of the proposed approach.