Can the test itself provide increase possibility for catastrophic harm to human life, major financial losses, serious security breaches or mission failure? The answer may be to identify a safe proxy to test in it's place. A "twin" that operates in a similar space or with a similar taxonomy may provide greater safety in testing a critical system.
If you developed a device to navigate the floor of a building to identify hot spots for fire-suppression purposes, you may need to start a fire to test the device. If you could identify a safe proxy, one that operates in a similar fashion and uses the same "language" as the fire detector, you could test that proxy without starting fires, thus reducing the critical risk of your quality assurance efforts. You may identify a room cleaning device that also navigates flooring, across different surface types, that navigates obstacles, and identifies targets for action (in this case, cleaning) similar to the fire detector. This testing would not require starting fires.
Can the test itself provide increase possibility for catastrophic harm to human life, major financial losses, serious security breaches or mission failure? The answer may be to identify a safe proxy to test in it's place. A "twin" that operates in a similar space or with a similar taxonomy may provide greater safety in testing a critical system.
If you developed a device to navigate the floor of a building to identify hot spots for fire-suppression purposes, you may need to start a fire to test the device. If you could identify a safe proxy, one that operates in a similar fashion and uses the same "language" as the fire detector, you could test that proxy without starting fires, thus reducing the critical risk of your quality assurance efforts. You may identify a room cleaning device that also navigates flooring, across different surface types, that navigates obstacles, and identifies targets for action (in this case, cleaning) similar to the fire detector. This testing would not require starting fires.