The invention relates to a reconfiguration method designed to be implemented in a computer system, for compensating failures of a sensor system (1). The sensor system includes at least one sensor (2, 50) for measuring (12, 22) system states of an application system (11, 21) and at least one system model (4) for describing the application system, which together form at least one first observer (6) for estimating system states in order to provide system states for an allocated data processing device (14, 24). According to the method, failure states for a first observer are determined from deviations, which occur as a result of the comparison between a number of states measured by the sensor or sensors and a state estimated by the system model.