An exposition of system reliability analysis with an ecological perspective

This paper attempts to set the stage for a prospective interplay between ecology and reliability theory concerning the common issues of network connectivity and redundancy. The paper treats the problem of survival reliability which is the probability of successful migration of a specific species from a critical habitat patch to destination habitat patches via heterogeneous imperfect corridors. The paper surveys techniques of system reliability in an ecological setting and contributes methods for computing a new measure of reliability that arises when paths to destination habitat patches share common corridors. Care is taken to ensure that the reliability expressions obtained are as compact as possible and to check them for correctness.