User:Kimberly.N1/Forensic engineering

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Forensic engineering has been defined as "the investigation of failures—ranging from serviceability to catastrophic—which may lead to legal activity, including both civil and criminal". The forensic engineering field is very board in terms of the many disciplines that it covers, investigations that use forensic engineering are case of environmental damages to structures, system failures of machines, explosions, electrical, fire point of origin, vehicle failures and many more. It includes the investigation of materials, products, structures or components that fail or do not operate or function as intended, causing personal injury, damage to property or economic loss. The consequences of failure may give rise to action under either criminal or civil law including but not limited to health and safety legislation, the laws of contract and/or product liability and the laws of tort. The field also deals with retracing processes and procedures leading to accidents in operation of vehicles or machinery. Generally, the purpose of a forensic engineering investigation is to locate cause or causes of failure with a view to improve performance or life of a component, or to assist a court in determining the facts of an accident. It can also involve investigation of intellectual property claims, especially patents. In the US, forensic engineers require a professional engineering license from each state.

Investigation
'''When investigating a case a forensic engineer will follow a series of standard steps of their investigation process. First thing is when the forensic engineer arrives to the scene is to establish safety, they make sure that all the hazards have been dealt with an are safe to handle and be analyzed. The next step would be to do a initial incident appraisal, this is done before any analysis is done and they take a quick observation of what the solution is at hand. The third step in the investigative process is to plan how to the investigation will go and would resources they will need to obtain to do the analysis accurately. Next would be establishing the terms of reverence, this is when the forensic engineer will consult with the client on what they want done in the investigation. The next step is to create the investigative team, once their is plan on how to investigate they will make a team of the experts in the given field needed to conduct the analysis. lastly would be to start the investigation, and this is where they conduct their analysis.'''

Analysis
'''There are two of the main types of analysis done in forensic engineering, there is root cause analysis and failure analysis. Root cause analysis is defined as looking at the system as a whole and what lead to the system failing, root cause analysis is done with large scale object, for example a building collapse. Failure analysis is defined as the analysis of the specific part in a system that failed to operate, an example of this would be a car failure causing an accident. These two types of analysis are the initial assessments done when forensic engineering investigators start their investigation.'''