The Swiss Cheese model

Safety systems work in layers, but as the Adafruit Blog reports, engineer Marcin Wichary is exploring why those layers don't guarantee protection. The Swiss Cheese model explains complex system failures through a simple analogy: multiple safeguards exist, but each one has vulnerabilities. Usually, weaknesses in one layer are covered by strengths in the next. But occasionally, those holes line up perfectly, and a disaster breaks through at once. Cars demonstrate this—they prevent key removal until you shift into park, and alert you if you drive with the handbrake on. Yet even these layered protections can fail together. The model is now used in analyzing past accidents and planning prevention strategies, though it has both proponents and detractors.

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