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Title: Inviting Disaster: Lessons From the Edge of Technology by James R. Chiles ISBN: 0-06-662082-1 Publisher: HarperBusiness Pub. Date: 01 September, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.52 (25 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: You Don't Need to be an Engineer to Love this Book
Comment: Let's face it: our lives are dominated by technology. Luckily we rarely have to give it all that much thought. However there are those times when technology fails us. Planes crash, disasters like Bhopal happen, let's not forget Three Mile Island adn the Space Shuttle too. What happened? How about similar disasters and problems throughout history and little known disasters such as oil rig blowouts? How did our fail safe world fail?
The book Inviting Disaster attempts to answer those questions and does so in an entertaining and informative manner. Written by an engineer who understands hot to communicate with everyone, this book is a fun read with anyone with an interest in this topic.
I have absolutely no experience in anything mechanical, but came away after reading this book much better informed. In addition to the mechanical explanations, Chiles provides very informative glimpses into history. He's a good engineer, a good historian, and a good writer.
Rating: 5
Summary: Excellent General Introduction to Systems Safety
Comment: 'Inviting Disaster' is a compelling and easy to read book. It is an introduction to accident theory for generalists, and is as interesting (perhaps more so) to nontechnical people as it is to engineers and the like. James Chiles discusses several major accidents (Challenger, Three Mile Island, Ocean Ranger, etc.) in well executed chapters with substantial background from previous precursor accidents or incidents. One reviewer seems to believe that this is a flaw, but I disagree. The reviewer seems to believe, for instance, that the R101 (a dirigible, not a blimp, as the reviewer wrongly states) is totally irrelevant to Challenger. In fact R101 was the Challenger of it's day, and the social, managerial and technological pressures that ultimately led to the R101 disaster ultimately led to Challenger as well. Chiles ties this theme together in a seamless manner in chapter after chapter.
This book is not a rigorous technical analysis of the individual disasters with the engineering and math associated with formal inquiries and technical (AAIB, NTSB, etc.) investigations. What it does better than any of the technical inquiries could ever do, though, is make a clear a compelling case for the problems that led to each of the accidents covered, treating man-machine interface issues with particular grace.
I have long been associated with the more technical aspects of accident investigation and safety systems, but have to say that while there are more technical accounts available for all of these accidents, if you are looking for an entry level (but complete) overview of accidents and systems safety, you can't go wrong with this book.
Rating: 4
Summary: Interesting Reading But Not Technical
Comment: If you were expecting to find technical understanding of how best to improve a plant, don't buy this book. If you want a qualitative understanding of why disasters occur, this is the book. For a quantitative, engineer's perspective, refer to "Managing Risk and Reliability of Process Plants," by Mark Tweeddale. I found this book very insightful and easy to read. After reading this book, I was encouraged to go on to more technical text. After reading this book I decided to make it a career goal NOT to be one of the engineers who designed an oil plateform where the controls could be shorted out by sea water with the fill-valves open on failure. Dumb!
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Title: Normal Accidents by Charles Perrow ISBN: 0691004129 Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr Pub. Date: 27 September, 1999 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: The Logic of Failure by Dietrich Dorner, Rita Kimber, Robert Kimber ISBN: 0201479486 Publisher: Perseus Publishing Pub. Date: 15 January, 1996 List Price(USD): $19.00 |
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Title: Why Things Bite Back : Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences by Edward Tenner ISBN: 0679747567 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 02 September, 1997 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: The Challenger Launch Decision: Risky Technology, Culture, and Deviance at Nasa by Diane Vaughan ISBN: 0226851761 Publisher: University of Chicago Press (Trd) Pub. Date: February, 1997 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
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Title: Human Error by James Reason ISBN: 0521314194 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 26 October, 1990 List Price(USD): $33.00 |
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