The natural world contains millions of species of living organisms and these contain a great range of components and processes that have been proven to function very reliably in harsh environments. One of the key reasons for the high reliability of living organisms is the existence of reliability and safety strategies. This paper presents a review of 32 reliability and safety strategies that are found in living organisms and discusses to what extent each of these strategies is used, or can be used, in engineering systems, particularly process systems. There are several strategies used in nature that are not used much in engineering systems. As engineering systems take on more of the characteristics of biological systems, there are potential benefits in copying the strategies of nature.
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