Accidents in Engineering and Socio-technical Systems: The Science and Recent Advances

Abstract

Since the invention of the steam engine, many engineering innovations have propelled the human civilization forward and the society has changed dramatically. At the same time, accidents of various kinds (e.g. car, rail, aircraft, ships, industrial, etc.) have never stopped taking place. Hence, for any engineering and socio-technical system, safety has become one of the most important concerns in modern society. In order to understand the science of accidents, some notable accident theories and models were reviewed in this paper and their relative merits and demerits were discussed as well. The study finds that accident models and theories are diversified and different from each other. Therefore, the science behind accident cannot be unified into a single discipline. Also, changes in human civilization over the years have given birth to new modes of accidents (such as automobile, aircraft, spacecraft and etc.). This study, thus, searches the unified science of accidents and therefore, discusses the newly developed accident analysis technique called the Logic Programming Technique (LPT). It is expected that this new domain of safety engineering may contribute to achieving safety in the future automobile industry.