Accident analysis

Accident analysis is carried out in order to determine the cause or causes of an accident or series of accidents so as to prevent further incidents of a similar kind. It is also known as accident investigation. It may be performed by a range of experts, including forensic scientists, forensic engineers or health and safety advisers. Accident investigators, particularly those in the aircraft industry, are colloquially known as "tin-kickers".^[1]

Sequence

Accident analysis is performed in four steps:

1. Fact gathering: After an accident happened a forensic process starts to gather all possibly relevant facts that may contribute to understanding the accident.
2. Fact Analysis: After the forensic process has been completed or at least delivered some results, the facts are put together to give a "big picture." The history of the accident is reconstructed and checked for consistency and plausibility.
3. Conclusion Drawing: If the accident history is sufficiently informative, conclusions can be drawn about causation and contributing factors.
4. Counter-measures: In some cases the development of counter-measures is desired or recommendations have to be issued to prevent further accidents of the same kind.

Methods

There exist numerous forms of Accident Analysis methods. These can be divided into three categories:

1. Causal Analysis uses the principle of causality to determine the course of events. Though people casually speak of a "chain of events", results from Causal Analysis usually have the form of directed a-cyclic graphs-the nodes being events and the edges the cause-effect relations. Methods of Causal Analysis differ in their respective notion of causation.
2. Expert Analysis relies on the knowledge and experience of field experts. This form of analysis usually lacks a rigorous (formal/semiformal) methodological approach. This usually affects falsify-ability and objectivity of analyses. This is of importance when conclusions are heavily disputed among experts.
3. Organizational Analysis relies on systemic theories of organization. Most theories imply that if a system's behaviour stayed within the bounds of the ideal organization then no accidents can occur. Organizational Analysis can be falsified and results from analyses can be checked for objectivity. Choosing an organizational theory for accident analysis comes from the assumption that the system to be analysed conforms to that theory.

See also

Accident analysis methods

• Accident
• Debugging
• Failure mode and effects analysis
• Forensic engineering
• Forensic science
• Why-Because Analysis

Related Disciplines

• Safety engineering
• Human factors, Human reliability, and Pilot error

Footnotes

References

"Accident Investigation". U.S. Department of Labor, Occupational Safety & Health Administration. Archived from the original on 17 May 2007. http://www.osha.gov/SLTC/accidentinvestigation/index.html. Retrieved 2007-05-12. 

External links

• Acci-Maps
• Safety through Organisational Learning (SOL)
• Systems-Theoretic Accident Model and Process (STAMP)
• U.S. National Transportation Safety Board
• Why-Because Analysis (WBA)