1. A method comprising: generating a predictive model from analysis of historical defect data and corresponding historical escalation data, including modeling a plurality of predictive models through a data-mining algorithm by examining patterns of the historical defect data and the historical escalation data, and validating each predictive model of the plurality of predictive models by comparing a predicted escalation risk determined by a predictive model with the historical escalation data associated with the defect; and applying the predictive model with the best validation accuracy to current defect data to determine an escalation risk of the current defect data.