Managing Risk

The human element is the principle cause of incidents and accidentsin all technology industries; hence it is evident that anunderstanding of the interaction between humans and technology iscrucial to the effective management of risk. Despite this, notested model that explicitly and quantitatively includes the humanelement in risk prediction is currently available. Managing Risk: the Human Element combines descriptive andexplanatory text with theoretical and mathematical analysis,offering important new concepts that can be used to improve themanagement of risk, trend analysis and prediction, and hence affectthe accident rate in technological industries. It uses examples ofmajor accidents to identify common causal factors, or"echoes", and argues that the use of specificexperience parameters for each particular industry is vital toachieving a minimum error rate as defined by mathematicalprediction. New ideas for the perception, calculation andprediction of risk are introduced, and safety management is coveredin depth, including for rare events and "unknown"outcomes * Discusses applications to multiple industries includingnuclear, aviation, medical, shipping, chemical, industrial,railway, offshore oil and gas; * Shows consistency between learning for large systems andtechnologies with the psychological models of learning from errorcorrection at the personal level; * Offers the expertise of key leading industry figures involvedin safety work in the civil aviation and nuclear engineeringindustries; * Incorporates numerous fascinating case studies of keytechnological accidents. Managing Risk: the Human Element is an essential read forprofessional safety experts, human reliability experts andengineers in all technological industries, as well as riskanalysts, corporate managers and statistical analysts. It is alsoof interest to professors, researchers and postgraduate students ofreliability and safety engineering, and to experts in humanperformance. "...congratulations on what appears to be, at a highlevel of review, a significant contribution to theliterature...I have found much to be admired in (your)research" Mr. Joseph Fragola - Vice President ofValador Inc. "The book is not only technically informative, but alsoattractive to all concerned readers and easy to be comprehended atvarious level of educational background. It is truly an excellentbook ever written for the safety risk managers and analysisprofessionals in the engineering community, especially in the highreliability organizations..." Dr Feng Hsu, Head ofRisk Assessment and Management, NASA Goddard Space FlightCenter "I admire your courage in confronting your theoreticalideas with such diverse, ecologically valid data, and your successin capturing a major trend in them....I should add that I findall this quite inspiring . ...The idea that you need to findthe right measure of accumulated experience and not just routinelyused calendar time makes so much sense that it comes as a shock torealize that this is a new idea", Professor StellanOhlsson, Professor of Psychology, University of Illinois atChicago