Nancy Leveson

Engineering has experienced a technological revolution, but the basic engineeringtechniques applied in safety and reliability engineering, created in a simpler, analog world, havechanged very little over the years. In this groundbreaking book, Nancy Leveson proposes a newapproach to safety--more suited to today's complex, sociotechnical, software-intensive world--basedon modern systems thinking and systems theory. Revisiting and updating ideas pioneered by 1950saerospace engineers in their System Safety concept, and testing her new model extensively onreal-world examples, Leveson has created a new approach to safety that is more effective, lessexpensive, and easier to use than current techniques. Arguing that traditional models of causalityare inadequate, Leveson presents a new, extended model of causation (Systems-Theoretic AccidentModel and Processes, or STAMP), then then shows how the new model can be used to create techniquesfor system safety engineering, including accident analysis, hazard analysis, system design, safetyin operations, and management of safety-critical systems. She applies the new techniques toreal-world events including the friendly-fire loss of a U.S. Blackhawk helicopter in the first GulfWar; the Vioxx recall; the U.S. Navy SUBSAFE program; and the bacterial contamination of a publicwater supply in a Canadian town. Leveson's approach is relevant even beyond safety engineering,offering techniques for "reengineering" any large sociotechnical system to improve safetyand manage risk.

Systems Thinking Applied to Safety

Engineering a Safer World

We are building systems today-and using computers to control them-that have the potential for large-scale destruction of life and environment. More than ever, software engineers and system developers, as well as their managers, must understand the issues and develop the skills needed to anticipate and prevent accidents. Nancy Leveson examines what is currently known about building safe electromechanical systems and looks at past accidents to see what practical lessons can be applied to new computer-controlled systems.

System Safety and Computers

SafeWare

Erik Hollnagel

David D. Woods

For Resilience Engineering, 'failure' is the result of the adaptations necessary to cope with the complexity of the real world, rather than a malfunction. Human performance must continually adjust to current conditions and, because resources and time are finite, such adjustments are always approximate. Featuring contributions from leading international figures in human factors and safety, Resilience Engineering provides thought-provoking insights into system safety as an aggregate of its various components - subsystems, software, organizations, human behaviours - and the way in which they interact.

Nancy Leveson

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