Swiss Cheese Theory Revisited: Correlation-Aware Admissibility and Active Execution Governance in Layered Systems

This paper proposes a correlation-aware reinterpretation of the classical Swiss Cheese Model introduced by James Reason. Instead of treating layered defenses as passive barriers analyzed primarily after failure propagation occurs, the proposed framework introduces an admissibility-first execution-governance architecture capable of monitoring synchronization pressure between layers before catastrophic operational escalation emerges. The framework integrates: • admissibility evaluation,• Active Regulation (AR),• cross-layer correlation monitoring,• trajectory preservation semantics,• bounded recovery control,• telemetry-supported auditability,• anti-cascade execution governance. A central concept of the paper is the distinction between local operational stability and globally correlated instability. The proposed interpretation suggests that layered systems may appear locally stable while simultaneously exhibiting synchronization trajectories associated with emerging operational risk. The document presents a conceptual and architectural interpretation only. Implementation-specific thresholds, adaptive tuning procedures, synchronization heuristics, execution policies, and deployment-sensitive operational mechanisms are intentionally omitted from the public version.