Project Overview

We are now applying these techniques to examine the improbable persistence of incidents in electricity generation and distribution. Significant improvements have been made in process and personal safety over the past decades. Nonfatal injuries and illnesses have dropped almost 70% since 1992. Yet, fatalities decreased at less than half that rate. Low probability, high consequence events have remained improbably persistent. Following an incident, an investigation will identify the causal and contributing factors, including organizational issues. However, this does not necessarily mean we can predict exactly how, when, or why the next accident or near miss will occur. This is particularly challenging for complex socio-technical organizations (i.e., energy, processing, transportation) with very low accident rates.