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In setting about building ARMAC it was necessary to be clear about the approach to be taken to threat. Optimists, it is said are more often happy, but pessimists are more often right. ARMAC is designed around a pessimistic threat model. It assumes that during a serious fire event, power will fail, mains water supply will stop, communication will degrade, sensors will provide unreliable data, and human intervention may be delayed or impossible. The system therefore aims to remain useful under partial failure rather than optimal under ideal conditions.
Bushfire defence is treated as a prolonged process rather than a single moment of impact. Fires approach, intensify, pass, and leave behind residual risks such as ember attack. ARMAC explicitly models these phases and adapts behaviour over time, rather than reacting to instantaneous readings alone.
Resource awareness is a core principle. Water, fuel, and electrical energy are finite, and expending them prematurely can be more damaging than doing nothing. Control decisions therefore favour endurance and self-preservation over maximal short-term response.
Finally, ARMAC is designed to fail slowly and visibly. Abrupt transitions, brittle dependencies, and silent failures are avoided wherever possible. This philosophy underpins not only the avoidance of vulnerable materials (even in small spots like the innards of pipe connections) but also the fallback strategies described in particular in discussing the electronic control modules and their programming.
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