1. A method for performing failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) on integrated circuits comprising: preparing a FMEA database of a integrated circuit under design and computing FMEA results from said FMEA database, automatically extracting information from a integrated circuit description, said extraction of information comprising: reading integrated circuit information, partitioning said circuit in invariant and elementary sensitive zones (SZ), and using said information in the preparing the FMEA database.