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Genre/Form: | Electronic books |
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Additional Physical Format: | Print version: Perrow, Charles. Normal Accidents : Living with High Risk Technologies. Princeton : Princeton University Press, ©2011 |
Material Type: | Document, Internet resource |
Document Type: | Internet Resource, Computer File |
All Authors / Contributors: |
Charles Perrow |
ISBN: | 9781400828494 140082849X |
OCLC Number: | 843204302 |
Description: | 1 online resource (779 pages). |
Contents: | Cover Page; Title Page; Copyright Page; Contents; Abnormal Blessings; Introduction; 1. Normal Accident at Three Mile Island; 2. Nuclear Power as a High-Risk System: Why We Have Not Had More TMIs-But Will Soon; 3. Complexity, Coupling, and Catastrophe; 4. Petrochemical Plants; 5. Aircraft and Airways; 6. Marine Accidents; 7. Earthbound Systems: Dams, Quakes, Mines, and Lakes; 8. Exotics: Space, Weapons, and DNA; 9. Living with High-Risk Systems; Afterword; Postscript: The Y2K Problem; List of Acronyms; Notes; Bibliography; Index. |
Series Title: | Princeton paperbacks. |
Abstract:
Normal Accidents analyzes the social side of technological risk. Charles Perrow argues that the conventional engineering approach to ensuring safety--building in more warnings and safeguards--fails because systems complexity makes failures inevitable. He asserts that typical precautions, by adding to complexity, may help create new categories of accidents. (At Chernobyl, tests of a new safety system helped produce the meltdown and subsequent fire.) By recognizing two dimensions of risk--complex versus linear interactions, and tight versus loose coupling--this book provides a powerful.
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