ELMAS produces a graphical interface to model logical cause structures of events. The main idea is to define all events and their relations that may cause some studied event e.g. system failure. Used method forces to be exact and helps to notice every detail. Modeling starts from the causes that are considered to be most important. After that the model is expanded step by step. This way it is possible to get useful results quickly with more and more detailed results when more time is spent for modeling.

The model is kind of a common language for the information about the studied subject. A group of experts may use it to combine all their knowledge and create as complete documentation as possible from it. Besides the logic between the events also many other types of clarifying information e.g. pictures and hyperlinks may be used to improve the documentation.

Created model stays stored so gained information will not be lost nor forgotten. It is easy to update and specify the model later to be more exact whenever something new is found out. Because the model is presented in ELMAS as an illustrative tree form and because it is easy to choose only some interesting parts of it for observation, the model stays easy to use even if it becomes very large.