Discover / Book
Normal Accidents

Normal Accidents

Charles Perrow · 1984 · 400 pages

AccidentsIndustrial accidentsRiskRisk assessmentTechnologyAccident

As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. Some book links are affiliate links; you pay the same price and we may earn a small commission.

About this book

"Normal" accidents, or system accidents, are so-called by Perrow because such accidents are inevitable in extremely complex systems. Given the characteristic of the system involved, multiple failures which interact with each other will occur, despite efforts to avoid them. Perrow said that operator error is a very common problem, many failures relate to organizations rather than technology, and big accidents almost always have very small beginnings. Such events appear trivial to begin with before unpredictably cascading through the system to create a large event with severe consequences. Perrow identifies three conditions that make a system likely to be susceptible to Normal Accidents. These are: - The system is complex - The system is tightly coupled - The system has catastrophic potential [[Wikipedia][1]] [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_Accidents "Wikipedia"

Appears in these reading paths

Related reading guides

Reader reviews

Ratings and notes from readers — tagged with how deep into the subject they were.

Loading reviews…

Discussion