A review of accident modelling approaches for complex socio-technical systems

  • Authors:
  • Zahid H. Qureshi

  • Affiliations:
  • University of South Australia, Mawson Lakes, South Australia

  • Venue:
  • SCS '07 Proceedings of the twelfth Australian workshop on Safety critical systems and software and safety-related programmable systems - Volume 86
  • Year:
  • 2007

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Abstract

The increasing complexity in highly technological systems such as aviation, maritime, air traffic control, telecommunications, nuclear power plants, space missions, chemical and petroleum industry, and healthcare and patient safety is leading to potentially disastrous failure modes and new kinds of safety issues. Traditional accident modelling approaches are not adequate to analyse accidents that occur in modern socio-technical systems, where accident causation is not the result of an individual component failure or human error. This paper provides a review of key traditional accident modelling approaches and their limitations, and describes new system-theoretic approaches to the modelling and analysis of accidents in safety-critical systems. This paper also discusses the application of formal methods to accident modelling and organisational theories on safety and accident analysis.