[SystemSafety] Historical Questions

[Les Chambers]

Drew

What an excellent question. And there is much in the literature that will give you answers. As part of the puzzle let me address the assessment of risk, which arose from our compelling need to predict the outcome of gambling. 

The ancient Greeks gave it some thought.

"To explain the beginning of everything, Greek mythology drew on a giant game of craps to explain what modern scientists call the Big Bang. Three brothers rolled dice for the universe, with Zeus winning the heavens, Poseidon the seas and Hades, the loser, going to hell as master of the underworld."

Unfortunately the Greeks weren't particularly interested in quantitative analysis of probability, the engine room of modern risk assessment. They left that to their intellectual progeny – the men of the Renaissance – 1000 years later. Though to be fair the ancient Greek word 'eikos' which meant plausible or probable, had the same sense as the modern concept of probability: "to be expected with some degree of certainty". Socrates defines this as "likeness to truth", but his sense was that "Likeness to truth is not the same thing as truth." Truth to the Greeks was only what could be proved by logic and axioms. For another thousand years, predicting the outcome of games and playing them remained separate activities.

 

Fast forward. I'll skip over 1202 - Fibonacci's discovery of the Hindu-Arabic numbering system (including the concept of zero) refer his book, Liber Abaci. It may be out of print.

 

One should note however that the modern concept of risk is rooted in this system. But the serious study of risk began during the Renaissance:

1654 Chevalier de Mere challenged Blaise Pascal to solve the problem of how to divide the stakes of an unfinished game of chance between two players when one of them is ahead. Pascal turned to Pierre de Fermat and their collaboration led to the discovery of the theory of probability. Hence our modern custom of relying less on superstition and tradition and more on the truth beyond reason that mathematics provides. At least for some of us. The lights are about to go out in Australia due to our politician's lack of energy planning. The probability of this occurrence was calculated at 100 percent several years ago.

1725 mathematicians compete with one another in devising tables of life expectancies. By the middle of this century marine insurance has emerged as a flourishing business in London.

1730 Abraham de Moivre suggests the structure of a normal distribution and describes the concept of standard deviation.

1738 Daniel Bernoulli defines the systematic process by which most people make choices and reach decisions - why prices must fall if customers are to be persuaded to buy more.

1754 Bayes focuses on the frequent occasions when we have sound intuitive judgements about the probability of some event and want to understand how to modify those judgements as actual events unfold.

1875 Francis Galton (Charles Darwin's first cousin) discovers regression to the mean, which explains why pride goeth before a fall and why clouds tend to have silver linings.

1952 Nobel laureate Harry Markowitz demonstrates mathematically why putting all your eggs in one basket is an unacceptably risky strategy and why diversification is the nearest an investor or business manager can ever come to a free lunch.

 

All the above was sourced from, Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk, Peter L. Bernstein.

 

Now to modern safety history:

12 June 1889.   One good example of the Genesis of regulatory frameworks was the Armagh rail disaster. Eighty people were killed and 260 injured, about a third of them children. Up to that point railway regulations were fundamentally suggestions. Lo and behold with the shedding of innocent blood, the suggestions became law:

 

"Nonetheless, within 2 months of the Armagh disaster Parliament had enacted the Regulation of Railways Act 1889, which authorised the Board of Trade to require the use of continuous automatic brakes on passenger railways, along with the block system of signalling and the interlocking of all points and signals. This is often taken as the beginning of the modern era in UK rail safety."

 

This resonates today (is there nothing new under the sun).

9 Mar 2017. Up to this point driverless car regulations are fundamentally suggestions. The 'innovators' have a track record of ignoring them (refer, the Colorado beer run). They routinely make fraudulent claims of their products with impunity (refer Tesla's claim of millions of safe miles driven even though hundreds if not thousands of software upgrades would have invalidated any proven-in-use claim).

Trump moves to eliminate 'red tape' regulations of the FDA, compromising drug safety.

 

Well, things have improved since the Arabs gave us zero. But by how much?

 

Cheers

 

Les

 

From: systemsafety [mailto:systemsafety-bounces at lists.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de] On Behalf Of Drew Rae
Sent: Thursday, March 9, 2017 9:50 AM
To: systemsafety at techfak.uni-bielefeld.de
Subject: [SystemSafety] Historical Questions

 

Folks,

I have a couple of questions about the history of system safety that I’m digging for answers to, but there may be those on the list who can provide shortcuts. 

 

Accident investigation in the modern sense really  became a thing in the 19th century, along with the rise and increasing power of “inspectorates”. Some of the investigations are surprisingly rich in their discussion of organisational, regulatory and socio-technical aspects of safety. 

The big difference that I’m interested in between modern accident investigations and regulators and 19th century investigations and regulators is the discussion of generic safety practices such as identifying, assessing and managing risks. Early reports will talk about specific design features (e.g. boiler safety valves) and specific practices (e.g. what a railway signalman should or shouldn’t have done). They will also talk about generic management practices such as supervision, training, competency and information sharing. 

 

My questions - and I’d be pleased for people to just answer from their personal knowledge, to help me narrow it down

 

1. When did people start talking about the importance of identifying hazards, assessing risks etc as general practices?

 

2. When did people start talking about not doing these things or doing them badly as a cause of accidents? 

 

Ideally I’d like to pin down the earliest few instances of these ideas.

 

Regards,

Drew

 

 

 





 

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