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PS-REC-120 · r2 RECOVERY INFERRED OBSERVED

RECOVERY PATH AMBIGUITY

There is more than one way back, and which one applies depends on how it broke.

01   DEFINITION

Condition in which several routes lead from an exception state back to a working one and the right choice depends on how the exception arose, so what would settle it is exactly what the exception disturbed.

02   CONDITIONS

UNCERTAINTY MISSING Which fault this is cannot be established from what the exception left behind.
TIME PRESSURE SHORT The choice has to be made while the state is still degrading.
ERROR ASYMMETRY ASYMMETRIC The wrong route and no route fail in different directions and to different people.
OPERATOR STATE DEDICATED The person is on this and nothing else, choosing from routes they were given.

03   WHERE IT APPEARS

ENERGYSeveral restoration sequences exist and which one applies depends on a fault the operator is inferring.
MEDICALMore than one way of stabilising is available and the right one turns on a cause not yet established.
MANUFACTURINGA line can be brought back in several orders, and the order that works depends on how it stopped.
TELECOMRestoration options differ by fault class, and the class is what the outage obscured.
LOGISTICSRecovering a disrupted flow has several routes, each right for a different disruption.
INDUSTRIALRestart sequences are written per fault and the fault is what nobody can name yet.

04   WHERE THIS IS SURFACING

This surfaces wherever restoration is procedural and the fault was not. Operators are handed a set of routes and no account of which fault they are in, so the route gets chosen from what is visible now rather than from what happened.

The question it keeps returning to is what a system should hold about its own failing — recording enough to reconstruct it costs effort at the moment there is least of it, and recording nothing leaves the way back to be guessed.