Engineering a Safer World: Systems Thinking Applied to Safety (Engineering Systems)

A new approach to safety, based on systems thinking, that is more effective, less costly, and easier to use than current techniques.Engineering has experienced a technological revolution, but the basic engineering techniques applied in safety and reliability engineering, created in a simpler, analog world, have changed very little over the years. In this groundbreaking book, Nancy Leveson proposes a new approach to safetymore suited to todays complex, sociotechnical, softwareintensive worldbased on modern systems thinking and systems theory. Revisiting and updating ideas pioneered by 1950s aerospace engineers in their System Safety concept, and testing her new model extensively on realworld examples, Leveson has created a new approach to safety that is more effective, less expensive, and easier to use than current techniques.Arguing that traditional models of causality are inadequate, Leveson presents a new, extended model of causation (SystemsTheoretic Accident Model and Processes, or STAMP), then shows how the new model can be used to create techniques for system safety engineering, including accident analysis, hazard analysis, system design, safety in operations, and management of safetycritical systems. She applies the new techniques to realworld events including the friendlyfire loss of a U.S. Blackhawk helicopter in the first Gulf War; the Vioxx recall; the U.S. Navy SUBSAFE program; and the bacterial contamination of a public water supply in a Canadian town. Levesons approach is relevant even beyond safety engineering, offering techniques for reengineering any large sociotechnical system to improve safety and manage risk.