Resilience Engineering: Concepts of the New Paradigm

Abstract

Resilience Engineering is a new safety paradigm that considers that the way duties are normally performed is something that is subject to variability, and since change is necessary to achieve success it should not be restricted. People in this complex context are continuously making adjustments to the original design, enabling them to achieve success, but occasionally accidents also arise due to an incomplete analysis of the current conditions. Thus, linear, simple or complex causation models do not reflect the ongoing reality, which is essentially non-linear, besides being complex. The accident "emerges" from normality, due to concurrent events that "resonate", and are not "caused" by a simple chain of errors. Therefore, new tools are required to analyse accidents and indicators to monitor processes, even though most simple incidents continue to be dealt with in the usual manner.