Organizational reliability, with regard to safety, needs to be assessed for the launch of spacecraft. In this paper, the compensatory and irreplaceable factor is defined while the organizational reliability of a spacecraft launch is researched by studying the decomposition and composition of factors. The factors of space and the characteristics of the organizational reliability of a spacecraft launch are analyzed. The composition method for the states of compensatory and irreplaceable factors is then established, and the overall organizational reliability model of spacecraft launch is constructed. This paper also uses the grey relational analysis technique to analyze and construct a model to assess the organizational maturity of important factors affecting organizational reliability. Finally, a case analysis demonstrates the application of the organizational reliability assessment model of a spacecraft launch, which validates the feasibility and effectiveness of the composition of states of factors. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The launch of spacecraft should synthesise various incomplete and uncertain symptoms of extreme events to dynamically assess the possibility of disaster during the launch readiness process. However, there are still many technical problems in disaster assessment of spacecraft launch engineering. For example, the problem of how to effectively use the disaster symptoms is not addressed well yet and the fact that group decision-making can be easily lead to the minority opinion being ignored. Based on the extreme event symptom obtaining technique, a disaster warning model combining both virtual and real evidence is built through information fusion and network inference, using evidence theory and Bayesian theory. Using information fusion, the proposed model shows good performance with regard to complementary evidence, A disaster warning model for a spacecraft launch 143 elimination of data redundancy and reduction of uncertainty. Using symptom information-based network inference, this model guarantees the identification of the correct minority. Finally, the effectiveness, correctness and feasibility of the model are verified by analysis of the 'Challenger' space shuttle explosion.Keywords: risk assessment management; disaster warning model; spacecraft launch engineering; information fusion; network inference; extreme events symptoms.Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Xuejun, D., Yingwu, C., Jianwei, M. and Ming, L. (2012) 'A disaster warning model for a spacecraft launch based on information fusion and network inference', Int.