Hollnagel Erik - Resilience engineering in practice. Volume 2, Becoming resilient

RESILIENCE ENGINEERING IN PRACTICE, VOLUME 2

Series Editors

Professor Erik Hollnagel, Institute of Public Health,
University of Southern Denmark, Denmark

Professor Sidney Dekker, Key Centre for Ethics, Law, Justice and Governance,
Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia

Dr Christopher P. Nemeth, Principal Scientist, Cognitive Solutions Division
(CSD) of Applied Research Associates, Inc. (ARA), Fairborn, Ohio, USA

Dr Yushi Fujita, Technova, Inc., Japan

Resilience engineering has become a recognized alternative to traditional approaches to safety management. Whereas these have focused on risks and failures as the result of a degradation of normal performance, resilience engineering sees failures and successes as two sides of the same coin as different outcomes of how people and organizations cope with a complex, underspecified and therefore partly unpredictable environment.

Normal performance requires people and organizations at all times to adjust their activities to meet the current conditions of the workplace, by trading-off efficiency and thoroughness and by making sacrificing decisions. But because information, resources and time are always finite such adjustments will be approximate and consequently performance is variable. Under normal conditions this is of little consequence, but every now and then and sometimes with a disturbing regularity the performance variability may combine in unexpected ways and give rise to unwanted outcomes.

The Ashgate Studies in Resilience Engineering series promulgates new methods, principles and experiences that can complement established safety management approaches. It provides invaluable insights and guidance for practitioners and researchers alike in all safety-critical domains. While the Studies pertain to all complex systems they are of particular interest to high-hazard sectors such as aviation, ground transportation, the military, energy production and distribution, and healthcare.

Becoming Resilient

Edited by

CHRISTOPHER P. NEMETH
Applied Research Associates, Inc., USA

ERIK HOLLNAGEL
University of Southern Denmark, Denmark

ASHGATE

Christopher P. Nemeth and Erik Hollnagel 2014

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.

Christopher P. Nemeth and Erik Hollnagel have asserted their rights under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors of this work.

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ISBN: 9781472425157 (hbk)

ISBN: 9781472425164 (ebk-PDF)

ISBN: 9781472425171 (ebk-ePUB)

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Christopher Nemeth

Per Becker, Marcus Abrahamsson and Henrik Tehler

Jean Christophe Le Coze and Nicolas Herchin

Robert L. Wears and L. Kendall Webb

Masaharu Kitamura

Tarcisio Abreu Saurin, Carlos Torres Formoso and Camila Campos Fam

Amy Rankin, Jonas Lundberg and Rogier Woltjer

Akinori Komatsubara

Alexander Cedergren

Johan Bergstrm, Eder Henriqson and Nicklas Dahlstrm

Elizabeth Lay and Matthieu Branlat

David Mendona

Erik Hollnagel

Christopher Nemeth

Becoming Resilient is the second text in the Ashgate series Resilience Engineering in Practice (REiP). While Ashgate Publishings Resilience Engineering Perspectives series has explored what the field of resilience engineering (RE) is, REiP take the practical approach to RE. The chapters in this text seek answers to the challenging questions that are posed by applying concepts in prior texts to actual problems. Their reports show that while the first successful steps have been made, there is still a lot to do in order to develop RE from an initial concept into an approach that will change the way systems are developed and operated.

The creation of systems that are ready to evolve in response to unforeseen conditions poses a challenge to also develop a new way to think about design and engineering. Designers and engineers typically develop systems, and engineers are entrusted with ensuring systems are built to operate according to requirements. But new approaches such as RE call for new abilities. What professional abilities are needed to create systems that have the resilient characteristics that chapters in this text describe? What skills and opportunities will engineers need in order to develop systems that can adapt to meet unforeseen demand?

For years, radio towers used a strong base to withstand the effects of high winds. Their rigid design, though, limited how high they could be built. The invention of slender radio masts, held in place by guy wires, made taller towers possible by allowing the structure to move in response to the wind instead of standing rigidly against it. Engineering practice faces a similar transition.

Engineers have traditionally sought ways to maintain sufficient margins to assure safe performance. In the process they have developed a resistance to sources of variability that could affect those margins. This may fit wellbounded stable domains, where sources of variability are fairly well known. However, poorly bounded and illbehaved domains are increasing in number and importance. Domains such as these routinely make demands that can only be met by socio-technical systems (Hollnagel and Woods, 2005), which are the goaldirected collaborative assembly of people, hardware and software. In these systems, their elements operate collectively, not individually. Woods (2000) referred to the interaction of all system elements as agentenvironment mutuality. Their performance and interaction provide outcome behavior, and the data that can be gathered on their performance can be compared against requirements.

Engineering is the application of science and mathematics by which the properties of matter and the sources of energy in nature are made useful to people (Merriam Webster, 2013). Systems engineering (SE), which has a significant role in RE, integrates multiple elements into a whole that is intended to serve a useful purpose. SE is an interdisciplinary approach and means to enable the realization of successful systems that focuses on defining customer needs and required functionality early in the development cycle, documenting requirements, then proceeding with design synthesis and system validation while considering the complete problem: operations, performance, test, manufacturing, cost and schedule, training and support, disposal (INCOSE, 2013). To do this, SE integrates all the disciplines and specialty groups into a team effort forming a structured development process that proceeds from concept to production to operation and considers both the business and the technical needs of all customers with the goal of providing a quality product that meets the user needs (INCOSE 2013). The process assembles elements into a coherent whole, but how does that whole operate? How does it respond to demands? What happens when it reaches the upper bounds of its ability to withstand a challenge? Answers to these and other challenges will come from new approaches by those who develop these systems.