Engineering a Safer World: Systems Thinking Applied to Safety
(Paperback)
Publishing Details
Engineering a Safer World: Systems Thinking Applied to Safety
By (Author) Nancy G. Leveson
MIT Press Ltd
MIT Press
16th December 2016
United States
Classifications
Professional and Scholarly
Non Fiction
Reliability engineering
Health and safety in the workplace
620.86
Physical Properties
Paperback
560
Width 178mm, Height 229mm, Spine 24mm
Description
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 safety-more suited to today's complex, sociotechnical, software-intensive world-based 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 real-world 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 (Systems-Theoretic 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 safety-critical systems. She applies the new techniques to real-world events including the friendly-fire 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. Leveson's approach is relevant even beyond safety engineering, offering techniques for "reengineering" any large sociotechnical system to improve safety and manage risk.
Author Bio
Nancy G. Leveson is Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics and Engineering Systems at MIT. An acknowledged leader in the field of safety engineering, she has worked to improve safety in nearly every industry over the past thirty years.
