Resilience Engineering in Practice ─ A Guidebook

The topic is smack in the middle of headlines these days in connection with nuclear power plants in Japan, and the world watches how the power of the recent earthquake and tsunami simply overwhelmed the plants' design. According to the prologue, this work emphasizes "improving the number of things that go right, [rather] than reducing the number of things that go wrong"--complementing investigation of the causes of accidents, risk assessment, and safety management with maximization of the "ability to respond to events, to monitor ongoing developments, to anticipate future threats and opportunities, and to learn from past failures and successes alike." This defines resilience engineering. Contributed chapters thoroughly discuss strategies for dealing with critical situations and anticipating failure, as well the particulars of numerous cases. Contributors are from many countries and include engineers of various types (e.g. civil, aerospace, ergonomics, cognitive systems, human factors) and some social scientists involved with safety. The editors are affiliated as follows: Erik Hollnagel (MINES ParisTech, France); Jean Paries (Dedale SA, France); David Woods (Ohio State U., US); and John Wreathall (consultant based in the US). Annotation c2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Erik Hollnagel (Ph.D., psychology) is Professor and Industrial Safety Chair at A?cole des Mines de Paris (France), Professor Emeritus at University of LinkA?ping (Sweden), and Visiting Professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim (Norway). He has since 1971 worked at universities, research centres, and industries in several countries and with problems from several domains, including nuclear power generation, aerospace and aviation, air traffic management, software engineering, healthcare, and land-based traffic. His professional interests include industrial safety, resilience engineering, accident investigation, cognitive systems engineering and cognitive ergonomics. He has published more than 250 papers and authored or edited 17 books, some of the most recent titles being The ETTO Principle (Ashgate, 2009), Resilience Engineering Perspectives: Preparation and Restoration (Ashgate, 2009), Resilience Engineering Perspectives: Remaining Sensitive to the Possibility of Failure (Ashgate, 2008), Resilience Engineering: Concepts and Precepts (Ashgate, 2006), and Barriers and Accident Prevention (Ashgate, 2004). Erik Hollnagel is Editor-in-chief of Ashgate Studies in Resilience Engineering and, together with Pietro C. Cacciabue, Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Cognition, Technology & Work. Jean PariA‥s graduated from the French National School of Civil Aviation as an engineer, then joined the DGAC for several positions dealing with air safety regulations. He was a member of the ICAO Human Factors & Flight Safety Study Group since its creation in 1988. In 1990, he joined the Bureau EnquAates Accident as Deputy Head, and Head of Investigations, where he led the technical investigation into the Mont Saint-Odile air accident, 1992. In 1994, Jean left the BEA to be a founding member - and now the CEO - of DAcdale SA. Set in Paris and Melbourne (Australia), DAcdale activity focuses on the Human and Organisational dimensions of safety, for aviation as well as for nuclear, railway, hospital, road, and maritime operations. Jean is a member of the Resilience Engineering core group, and the author of numerous papers, book chapters and communications on Human Factors in safety. He holds a Commercial Pilot Licence with Instrument, Multi-engines, Turboprop, and Instructor ratings and a Helicopter Private Pilot Licence. David D. Woods (Purdue '79) is professor at Ohio State University, Institute for Ergonomics, and Past-President of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society. From his initial work following the TMI accident in nuclear power, to studies of coordination breakdowns between people and automation in aviation accidents, to his role in today's debates about patient safety, he has studied how human and team cognition contributes to success and failure in complex, high risk systems. He was on the board of the National Patient Safety Foundation from its founding until 2002 and Associate Director of the Veterans Health Administration's Midwest Center for Inquiry on Patient Safety (1999-2002). He is author of Behind Human Error, received the Jack A. Kraft Innovator Award from Human Factors and Ergonomic Society for advancing Cognitive Engineering and its application to safer systems, and received a Laurels Award from Aviation Week and Space Technology (1995) on the human factors of highly automated cockpits. He currently serves on a National Academy of Engineering / Institute of Medicine Study Panel applying engineering to improve health care systems and on a National Research Council panel on research to define the future of the national air transportation system. John Wreathall is a specialist in systems-engineering methods with particular emphasis on human and organizational performance as it relates to safety, reliability and quality. He has pioneered the development and application of human-performance analysis methods, both quantitative and qualitative, for application in the medical, transportation, nuclear, and aerospace communities. He has participated in the development of the understanding of human errors and the circumstances that lead to their occurrence, including chairing and presenting at international conferences on this subject sponsored by NATO, the World Bank, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). He has been an invited participant to the three International Symposia on Resilience Engineering, in SoderkA?ping (Sweden) and Juan-les-Pins (France), and co-chair of the 2005 International Seminar on Resilience Engineering and Cognitive Systems, Rio de Janeiro (Brazil). He was the invited keynote speaker on the subject of resilience engineering at the First Mercosur (South American Free Trade Association) Conference on Safety and Security in Work and its Environment, Porto Alegre (Brazil) in 2004.