There is an increasing demand for dynamic systems to become more safe
and reliable. This requirement extends beyond the normally accepted
safety-critical systems of nuclear reactors and aircraft where safety is
paramount important, to systems such as autonomous vehicles and fast
railways where the system availability is vital. It is clear that fault
diagnosis (including fault detection and isolation, FDI) has been
becoming an important subject in modern control theory and practice. For
example, the number of papers on FDI presented in many control-related
conferences has been increasing steadily. The subject of fault detection
and isolation continues to mature to an established field of research in
control engineering. A large amount of knowledge on model-based fault
diagnosis has been ac- cumulated through the literature since the
beginning of the 1970s. However, publications are scattered over many
papers and a few edited books. Up to the end of 1997, there is no any
book which presents the subject in an unified framework. The consequence
of this is the lack of "common language", dif- ferent researchers use
different terminology. This problem has obstructed the progress of
model-based FDI techniques and has been causing great concern in
research community. Many survey papers have been published to tackle
this problem. However, a book which presents the materials in a unified
format and provides a comprehensive foundation of model-based FDI is
urgently needed.