Complex Systems Are Very Likely to Experience Accidents
Many people in today’s industrial countries have experienced the frustration and inconvenience of having their car break down. That event, while troublesome, often does not pose any significant danger to people. It is a useful microcosm, however, because cars, like other complex systems, will almost certainly malfunction at some point during use. While we cannot prove the following assertion for sure, empirical data and observations strongly suggest that complex systems that are made of unreliable components will inevitably experience accidents so long as there exist flaws in the system that have no reliable safeguards. Numerous studies have investigated such a ‘Normal Accident Theory,’ and two notable cases very strongly indicate its validity: petroleum refinery accidents and the space shuttle Challenger, both of which will be discussed in this paper.
Normal Accident Theory (NAT) is the label for a school of thought that considers accidents in complex systems to be inevitable. Two characteristics of complex systems that are very important to NAT are the interactive complexity of a system and a system’s coupling. Coupling is determined primarily by the time between processes in a system, the independent or dependent progression of such processes, and the number of different ways that a system’s goal can be achieved (Piccard, 1999). Systems are classified as ‘tightly coupled,’ meaning that the time between processes is small, the processes are highly interdependent, and there are few paths, if not one, to the goal; or ‘loosely coupled,’ which is the opposite. These characteristics are particularly useful for comparing different complex systems and evaluating them to determine which are at the highest risk for accidents. The results can then be used to minimize, but not eliminate, the possibility that an accident will occur.
Sociologist Charles Perrow is generally credited with developing NAT. In order to understand the principles of NAT, several definitions that it uses are essential. An accident is defined as “an event that is unintended, unfortunate, damages people or objects, affects the functioning of the system of interest, and is non-trivial.” (Perrow, 1994) There are two types of accidents: component failure accidents, which “involve one or more component failures (part, unit, or subsystem) that are linked in an anticipated sequence,” and ‘normal accidents,’ or system accidents as they can be called (Perrow, 1994).
...ility of the experimental method is somewhat limited in that some outcomes cannot generalize into real world outcomes. The design method used was also expensive, since there are several pieces of equipment and tools that were required to complete the study. Further, the reliability of the study is limited in that it failed to identify and analyze the relative import of other factors that could lead to fatal accidents, such as localized infrastructure deficiencies. (DAlessio, Stolzenberg and Terry, Clinton, 1999).
According to “A Human Error Approach to Aviation Accident Analysis…”, both authors stated that HFACS was developed based off from the Swiss Cheese model to provide a tool to assist in the investigation process to identify the probable human cause (Wiegmann and Shappell, 2003). Moreover, the HFACS is broken down into four categories to identify the failure occur. In other words, leading up to adverse events the HFACS will identify the type error occur.
The term incident refer to the combine set of occurrences of both incident and near misses.(Otong,2001) it refer to unwanted event involving safety incident with environment impact. Incident is not one person failure it may involve the system
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...ial approaches which are Normal Accident and HROs, although it seems certain that both of them tends to limit the progression that can contribute toward achieving to highly protective systems. This is because the scope of the problems is too narrow and the potential of the solutions is too limited as well. Hence, Laporte and Consolini et.al., (1991) as cited in Marais, et.al., (2004) conclude that the most interesting feature of the high reliability organization is to prioritize both performance and security by the managerial oversight. In addition, the goal agreement must be an official announcement. In essence, it is recommended that there is a continuing need in the high risk organizations for more awareness of developing security system and high reliability environment in order to gain highly successful method to lower risk in an advance technology system.
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If equipment flaw or a defective part is spotted, the damaged machine directly stops, and operators halt production and rectify the identified problem. It is essential ...
Galileo is one of the greatest scientists in the world, especially at that moment. At that
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From a young age Galileo was both bothered and motivated by the lack of scientific rule and emphasis on church rule. Galileo’s approach to learning was very admirable. Instead of sticking to his course of study, he learned by investigating his everyday activities. By learning to inquire further about what interested him, he made e...
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In the past, the term "accident" was often used when referring to an unplanned, unwanted event. To many "accident" suggests an event that was random, and could not have been prevented. Since nearly all work site fatalities, injuries, and illnesses are preventable, OSHA suggests using the term "incident" investigation. An incident usually refers to an unexpected event that did not cause injury or damage this time but had the potential. "Near miss" or "dangerous occurrence" are also terms for an event that could have caused harm but did not.