Compendium of Nancy Leveson: STAMP, STPA, CAST and Systems Thinking

Although I don’t often mention or post about Leveson’s work, she’s probably been the most influential thinker on my approach after Barry Turner. So here is a mini-compendium covering some of Leveson’s work. Feel free to shout a coffee if you’d like to support the growth of my site: https://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-monograph/2908/Engineering-a-Safer-WorldSystems-Thinking-Applied https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840608101478 https://doi.org/10.1145/7474.7528 http://therm.ward.bay.wiki.org/assets/pages/documents-archived/safety-3.pdf http://sunnyday.mit.edu/papers/Rasmussen-Legacy.pdf https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00140139.2015.1015623… Continue reading Compendium of Nancy Leveson: STAMP, STPA, CAST and Systems Thinking

Root-Causal Factors: Uncovering the Hows & Whys of Incidents

This 2016 article from Fred Manuele explores some facets of causality in investigations. It’s based mainly on two key sources: Hollnagel’s 2004 ‘Barriers and accident prevention’ and Dekker’s 2006 ‘Field Guide to Understanding Human Error’. Won’t be much new for most but has some nice arguments from authors like Hollnagel, Dekker and Leveson. First he… Continue reading Root-Causal Factors: Uncovering the Hows & Whys of Incidents

Designing work systems for resilient performance: insights from resilience engineering

This explored Design for Resilient Performance (DfRP) via their framework. Not a summary – just a few extracts, but maybe I’ll summarise it in the future. Some extracts: ·        “Resilient performance (RP) is a socio-technical system’s ability to adjust its functioning prior to, during, or following changes and disturbances, thereby sustaining operations under both expected and… Continue reading Designing work systems for resilient performance: insights from resilience engineering

Resilience terminology and a visualisation of resilience/robustness in practice

This may interest people. It covers concepts of resilient performance within seaports. It’s a bit random (seaports), but otherwise gives a handy overview of resilience terms and applications. The first two images are just basic definitions. Extracts: ·        Image 3 represents resilience elements during disruptions – from pre-disruption, to the disruption, then post-disruption. ·        During pre-disruption, the… Continue reading Resilience terminology and a visualisation of resilience/robustness in practice

Identification of management traits related to human factors in new views of safety approaches

This paper from Leônidas Brasileiro and colleagues evaluated common attributes across approaches grouped under ‘New View’. i.e. HRO, S-II, SD, RE & HOP – they used both literature and Delphi method. Not a summary since you can read the full paper. It’s an accessible read if you’re keen to quickly understand some key differences and… Continue reading Identification of management traits related to human factors in new views of safety approaches

Human Success: Old wine in new bottles, or a shift of mindset for HRA in an automated world?

A really interesting conference paper from Andreas Bye, discussing whether shifting Human Reliability Analysis (HRA) terminology from human error to human success would help alleviate some of the blame-connotations. Also discussed is the human role in automated systems. It was meant to be a mini-post with a few dot-points and a couple of images, but… Continue reading Human Success: Old wine in new bottles, or a shift of mindset for HRA in an automated world?

Understanding Accidents – From Root Causes to Performance Variability

This 2002 discussion paper from Erik Hollnagel unpacks some assumptions of different accident models. Note: In this work, accident model isn’t the specific tool or method (e.g. ICAM), but a “frame of reference as the accident model, i.e., a stereotypical way of thinking about how an accident occurs”. i.e. the mental models and justifications on… Continue reading Understanding Accidents – From Root Causes to Performance Variability

The difference between ‘making do’ and resilience in complex systems

This paper explores the difference between ‘making do’ and resilience. Not a summary, but a few extracts: ·        Making do has been defined, from a waste perspective as “a situation where a task is started without all its standard inputs, or the execution of a task is continued although the availability of at least one standard… Continue reading The difference between ‘making do’ and resilience in complex systems

Compendium: Learning and improvement without incidents

Here’s a mini-compendium of…well, probably a lot of stuff with only a tenuous link to ‘learning’. I tried to focus on learning that doesn’t require incidents, but you’ll find those here, too. There’s >100 articles, mostly full-text. I think I went overboard. Unfortunately, it’s barely sorted. It includes: Shout me a coffee Learning Strengths &… Continue reading Compendium: Learning and improvement without incidents

Analyzing Procedure Performance using Abstraction Hierarchy: Implications of Designing Procedures for High-risk Process Operations

This paper explored the use of procedures and operator performance from the perspective of work domain analysis/abstraction hierarchy. I’ve skipped heaps – the ‘doing’ part of the abstraction hierarchy, but their descriptions of the problem and the discussion had some gold. For context: ·         Procedural issues have been linked in a number of major accidents… Continue reading Analyzing Procedure Performance using Abstraction Hierarchy: Implications of Designing Procedures for High-risk Process Operations