A Fresh Look at Barriers from Alternative Perspectives on Risk

This paper takes a fresh look at alternative perspectives on major accident causation theories to highlight the fact that these perspectives can supplement and improve the energy barrier perspective. The paper starts from a literature study of energy barrier perspective, Man-Made Disaster theory (MMD), Conflicting Objective Perspective (COP), Normal Accident Theory (NAT), High Reliability Organization theory (HRO), Resilience Engineering (RE), and System-Theoretic Accident Model and Processes (STAMP) model to find out main concepts and identify critical factors. A further study of safety barrier perspective is carried out using STAMP methodology to understand how barrier functions can fail. It was found that alternative perspectives can supplement the barrier perspective by structurally analyzing possible failure causes for barrier function (STAMP, MMD), looking for driving forces for unsafe decisions and unsafe actions when human interacts or be part of barrier systems (COP, HRO), and emphasizing possible complex interactions and tight coupling within barrier functions (NAT, RE). Furthermore, suggestions to barrier management based on best practices from these perspectives are presented, which will be developed into concrete risk reduction measures, such as checklists, audits schemes, or indicators to help decision-makers better comprehend and maintain the performance of barrier functions in further work.

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