Publication Laka-library:
Normal Accidents. Living with High-Risk Technologies
Author | Charles Perrow |
Date | January 1999 |
Classification | 6.01.3.70/81 (NUCLEAR SAFETY - RISK ANALYSES / RISK PERCEPTION) |
Remarks | First Published 1984. Upgraded, with a new afterword and a postscript on the Y2K problem |
Front |
From the publication:
Normal Accidents Living with High-risk technologies Charles Perrow First Published 1984 1999. Upgraded, with a new afterword and a postscript on the Y2K problem Normal Accidents analyzes the social side of technological risk. Charles Perrow argues that the conventional engineering approach to ensure safety-building in more warnings and safeguards-fails because systems complexity makes failures inevitable. He asserts that typical precautions, by adding to complexity, may help create new categories of accidents. (At Chernobyl, tests of a new safety system helped produce the meltdown and subsequent fire.) By recognizing two dimensions of risk-complex versus linear interactions, and light versus loose coupling-this books provides a powerful framework for analysing risks and the organizations that insists we run them. The first edition fulfilled one reviewer's prediction that it "may mark the beginning of accident research". In the new afterword and postscript to this edition the author reviews the extensive work on the major accidents of the last fifteen years, and the valuable extensions and refinements of his theory.
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