A Review of Accident Modelling Approaches for Complex Critical Sociotechnical Systems

The increasing complexity in highly technological systems such as aviation, maritime, air traffic control, telecommunications, nuclear power plants, defence and aerospace, chemical and petroleum industry, and healthcare and patient safety is leading to potentially disastrous failure modes and new kinds of safety issues. Traditional accident modelling approaches are not adequate to analyse accidents that occur in modern sociotechnical systems, where accident causation is not the result of an individual component failure or human error. This report provides a review of key traditional accident modelling approaches and their limitations, and describes new system-theoretic approaches to the modelling and analysis of accidents in safety-critical systems. It also discusses current research on the application of formal (mathematically-based) methods to accident modelling and organisational theories on safety and accident causation. This report recommends new approaches to the modelling and analysis of complex systems that are based on systems theory and interdisciplinary research, in order to capture the complexity of modern sociotechnical systems from a broad systemic view for understanding the multidimensional aspects of safety and accident causation.