Resilience markers for safer systems and organisations

If computer systems are to be designed to foster resilient performance it is important to be able to identify contributors to resilience. The emerging practice of Resilience Engineering has identified that people are still a primary source of resilience, and that the design of distributed systems should provide ways of helping people and organisations to cope with complexity. Although resilience has been identified as a desired property, researchers and practitioners do not have a clear understanding of what manifestations of resilience look like. This paper discusses some examples of strategies that people can adopt that improve the resilience of a system. Critically, analysis reveals that the generation of these strategies is only possible if the system facilitates them. As an example, this paper discusses practices, such as reflection, that are known to encourage resilient behavior in people. Reflection allows systems to better prepare for oncoming demands. We show that contributors to the practice of reflection manifest themselves at different levels of abstraction: from individual strategies to practices in, for example, control room environments. The analysis of interaction at these levels enables resilient properties of a system to be ‘seen’, so that systems can be designed to explicitly support them. We then present an analysis of resilience at an organisational level within the nuclear domain. This highlights some of the challenges facing the Resilience Engineering approach and the need for using a collective language to articulate knowledge of resilient practices across domains

Scientific Method, Anti-Foundationalism, and Public Decision-making

An examination of the legitimacy of attacks on lay assessments of environmental or other technological Risk. The case is made that rational policy requires an epistemology in which what we believe about Risk is bootstrapped onto how we should act concerning Risk

Pilot interaction with automated airborne decision making systems

The use of advanced software engineering methods (e.g., from artificial intelligence) to aid aircraft crews in procedure selection and execution is investigated. Human problem solving in dynamic environments as effected by the human's level of knowledge of system operations is examined. Progress on the development of full scale simulation facilities is also discussed

Legal Feasibility of Schengen-like Agreements in European Energy Policy: The Cases of Nuclear Cooperation and Gas Security of Supply

European energy policy is characterized by a complex allocation of authority between the European Union and its Member States which results in an intricate interplay of regulatory competence. Knowing the difficulties European countries face in coordinating and proposing common solutions in the area of energy, there is the urgent need to question the legal foundations underlying the decisionmaking process. Institutional paralysis, low reactivity to events and changes as well as systematic political horse-trading across all questions call for an alternative framework allowing some pioneering Member States to promote ad hoc common policies escaping the formal and procedural requirements of EU law. Our paper assesses the legal feasibility of short-run differentiation by means of partial international agreements inspired by the Schengen regime, namely entirely outside the EU framework. The key challenge from a legal point of view is to assess the substantive compatibility of such agreements in energy with the existing rules of the Union. Short run differentiation in energy cannot indeed be assessed at a high level of generalities. We therefore take two areas where legally-binding coordination at the sub-Union level is often called for: nuclear policy and gas security of supply. The possible substantive content of such cooperation is derived from the economic and political literature before legal feasibility is assessed. Our findings suggest that the scope for such agreements is limited for security of gas supply whereas it could be an improved cooperation device in certain areas of nuclear policy.Schengen

Human error contribution to nuclear materials-handling events

Thesis (S.B.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Nuclear Science and Engineering, 2007.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 40-41).This thesis analyzes a sample of 15 fuel-handling events from the past ten years at commercial nuclear reactors with significant human error contributions in order to detail the contribution of human error to fuel-handling activities, emphasizing how latent conditions can directly contribute to events. In particular, procedural inaccuracies often create conditions that lead to the development of errors related to maintenance work practices. This would be of significant concern for a pre-closure safety assessment for a geologic repository for spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste, where many fuel-handling work activities would be performed. Specific emphasis is placed on fuel movement activities and control of ventilation systems, which could significantly impact worker and public health and safety in the case of a fuel-handling accident.by Bradley Sutton.S.B

Identifying the Burdens and Opportunities for Tribes and Communities in Federal Facility Cleanup Activities: Environmental Remediation Technology Assessment Matrix For Tribal and Community Decision-Makers

The cleanup of this country's federal facilities can affect a wide range of tribal and community interests and concerns. The technologies now in use, or being proposed by the Department of Energy, Department of Defense and other federal agencies can affect tribal treaty protected fishing, hunting and other rights, affect air and water quality thereby requiring the tribe to bear the burden of increased environmental regulation. The International Institute for Indigenous Resource Management developed a tribal and community decision-maker's Environmental Remediation Technology Assessment Matrix that will permit tribes and communities to array technical information about environmental remediation technologies against a backdrop of tribal and community environmental, health and safety, cultural, religious, treaty and other concerns and interests. Ultimately, the matrix will allow tribes and communities to assess the impact of proposed technologies on the wide range of tribal and community interests and will promote more informed participation in federal facility cleanup activities

Barriers to Predictive Analytics Use for Policy Decision-Making Effectiveness in Turbulent Times: A Case Study of Fukushima Nuclear Accident

Predictive analytics are data-driven software tools that draw on confirmed relationships between variables to predict future outcomes. Hence they may provide government with new analytical capabilities for enhancing policy decision-making effectiveness in turbulent environments. However, predictive analytics system use research is still lacking. Therefore, this study adapts the existing model of strategic decision-making effectiveness to examine government use of predictive analytics in turbulent times and to identify barriers to using information effectively in enhancing policy decision making effectiveness. We use a case study research to address two research questions in the context of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident. Our study found varying levels of proactive use of SPEEDI predictive analytics system during the escalating nuclear reactor meltdowns between Japan’s central government agencies and between the central and the state government levels. Using the model, we argue that procedural rationality and political behavior can be used to explain some observed variations