Catastrophes and Turning Points in Civil Engineering and Construction - Literature review Example

ESSAY By Name Course Instructor Institution City/State Date Catastrophes and Turning Points in Civil Engineering and Construction Introduction The role of any engineer is to act in response to a need by creating or building something within a particular set of specifications (or guidelines) which carries out a certain task. Significantly, any creation or plan must carry out its purpose devoid of fail (Park et al., 2013, p.357). However, as mentioned by Bosela (2013, p. 13) everything has to ultimately fail (one way or another) in performing its intended task with a desired performance level. For this reason, the engineer have to put great effort to design in manner that will shun failure, and, more significantly, catastrophic failure that leads to environmental damage, loss of property, and maybe loss of life or injury (Bosela, 2013, p.14). Through study as well as analysis of Civil Engineering catastrophes, contemporary designers in the engineering field can gain knowledge of what to avoid and how to come up designs that have less probability of failure. People live in buildings as well as structures built by Civil Engineers and they always make use of these structures to work or live. Therefore, the important safety feeling of people living in these structures is presumably anchored partly in the verity that a certain number of hazards having an effect on the structures wherein people work and live has appropriately been anticipated and handled by engineers who offered acceptable designs in opposition to most likely risks. Based on the five theories of catastrophe, the essay seeks to analyse Catastrophes and turning points in Civil Engineering and Construction. Discussion The Human-Made Disaster Theory Barry Turner's path-breaking Man-made Disasters theory was arguably the first modern theoretical version of disaster vulnerability. Basically, the theory holds both a fundamental modern and historical significance for accident and disaster researchers. According to man-made disasters theory, in spite of the best objectives of all concerned, the goal of securely running technological systems may be weakened by a number of well-known and `usual organizational life processes (Pidgeon & O'Leary, 2000, p.16). With regard to the methodical qualitative analysis derived from 84 British inquiry reports on accidents, the human-made theory begins from the observation that catastrophes in major technological systems are by no means a likelihood occurrence, or an Act of God. Furthermore, they cannot be purely defined technologically, instead as argued by Turner, disasters stem from a contact between the organisational and human arrangements of the socio-technical systems installed to handle poorly-structured and multifaceted risk quandaries (Pidgeon & O'Leary, 2000, p.17). Certainly, in the man-made disasters theory, a disaster is defined in sociological terms and not by any means through its physical impacts, given that a considerable collapse or disruption of the subsisting cultural norms as well as beliefs concerning hazards, and for handling them together with their effects. Besides that, man-made disasters theory underlines how vulnerability in system time and again are caused by accidental and multifarious interactions between causative conditions, all of which could are improbable to individually defeat the set up safety systems. Callon's precautionary principle Unlike the human-made disaster theory, the precautionary principle encompasses a demanding responsibility to open the scope of feasible futures. According to (O'Riordan & Cameron, 1994, p.169), this does not involve being frightened on the most threatening possibilities in front, but it serves to rally people energies so as to innovate, persistently. The principle demands a practical standpoint and for people to embrace a courageous new-fangled vision of the world at present and coming days. So, when disastrous effects are likely, it is reasonable to take safety measures in opposition to the worst-case scenarios. Precautionary principle is rooted a number of foundations: for instance, it stresses on individual’s infrequent failure to understand the anticipated value of disastrous losses (O'Riordan & Cameron, 1994, p.170). Another foundation is its acknowledgment that political actors could take part in unpardonable holdup when the precautions’ cost would be sustained instantly and when the advantages would take time to benefit from; as well as comprehension of the difference between uncertainty as well as risk. The antagonists to Callon's precautionary principle claim that the principle functions at odds with the interests of innovation, research and science, and for this reason decelerate the growth of the economy; thus, deterring universities as well as enterprise form taking part, particularly in engineering field. The Janus Effect The Janus Effect is an elemental attribute of an individual that has the capability to interrelate with others in both dependence as well as authoritative roles. According to the theory, the legal foundation for regulating risk is based on common values. For that reason, the public must be guarded against risks, connoting that no technology utilisation ought to harm public or individual interests (Lindøe & Olsen, 2009, p.430). Therefore, it is in the interest of the public to reduce or prevent occupational risks as well as hazards. According to Lindøe and Olsen (2009, p.431), a re-orientation in the self-regulation direction surfaced towards late 20th century, and this regulation regime change resulted from the transformation of the Western democratic and capitalist society wherein reflexivity turned out to be a core idea. Basically, regime for risk regulation connotes the intricacy of risk issues in stakeholders, agencies, society, and institutions. Kandjani and Bernus (2012, p.2) espoused a cybernetic framework (behavior alteration, standard setting and data collection) and provides a general organizing of categories connected to the content as well as context of regulation. In this case, the contextual facets of Janus Effect connects the regulation backdrop like what type of risks are being handled as well as how risk insight differ among distinct social groups; who are the diverse actors generating or being influenced by the risk, as well as what type of people attitudes and per Kandjani and Bernus )2012, p.3) are associated with the risk whereas the content typifies the controller. High Reliability Organisation Theory There has been an endless attempt by some major hazard organisations to influence the safety and organisational culture at their sites to change them into a high reliability organisation (HRO) (that is to say, organisations that can sustain and manage performance that is almost error-free in spite of operating under hazardous circumstances where the errors’ consequences can be disastrous) with a culture of positive safety. Recently, there has been a lot of literature discussing about regulation of major hazard risks, particularly the philosophies of HRO, safety culture, as well as resilience management (Lekka, 2011, p.6). These studies recognize key characteristics as well as features that must be espoused by organisations so as to realize continuing high reliability as well as security goals. In general, these studies indicate that even though there are affluent understandings and descriptions of HRO processes, they have a propensity for being limited to certain contexts and, as a result, feasibility and/or applicability knowledge is limited in more mainstream contexts of the organization (Hurst, 1998, p.27). Basically, is improbable that processes of HRO can just be lifted off from one milieu and be used into a different devoid of taking into account the wider issues concerning, but not confined to, the working conditions and work nature. Normal Accident Theory When trying to comprehend the causes of technological accidents, Perrow (2011, p.369) posits that it becomes extremely hard to identify precisely what failed. This is because technologies, as stated in Normal Accident Theory are basically multifaceted and rely on scores of things that closely work together: Components and materials of various qualities are structured into sub-systems that are firmly engineered, and which are run by error-prone people in organisational structures that are not at all times most favourable. As a result, they are put through construction pressures and every sort of management manoeuvring (Perrow, 2011, p.369). In this case, failure in only one part (organisation, human, sub-system, or material) could match up with the breakdown of an completely dissimilar part, disclosing concealed connections random incidents, and neutralised redundancies, for which no manager or engineer may sensibly strategise. Accidents like Three Mile Island as well as several others each started as a mechanical catastrophe and afterward lead to a chain of technical cause-effect series for the reason that the operators caught up cannot end the flow or without knowing did things making the matter worse. Seemingly minor errors unexpectedly flow through the system unpredictably and lead to catastrophic results (Perrow, 2011, p.370). Therefore, this method of examining technology has normative effects: for instance, technologies that are potentially catastrophic, like biotechnology or nuclear power, cannot entirely be made catastrophe resistant. Conclusion In conclusion, it evident that, of all five abovementioned catastrophic theories, the man-made disasters theory is the most useful for assessing and/or learning from catastrophes within civil engineering since it recommends that the increase of latent events and errors is accompanied by a shared failure of organizational intelligence and cognition: Since the susceptibility to failure of the developing system remains hidden away by processes of the society, which satisfy risk evaluations. Akin to NAT, HRO theory, Callon's precautionary principle, and the Janus effect, HRO theory is not much useful since HRO organizational processes are not more expansively considered. Besides, the Normal Accident Theory concludes that a number of technologies, like nuclear power, must simply be discarded for the reason that they do not deserve the risk. References Bosela, P.A., 2013. Failure Case Studies in Civil Engineering: Structures, Foundations, and the Geoenvironment. New York: ASCE Publications. Hurst, N.W., 1998. Risk Assessment: The Human Dimension. Piccadilly, London: Royal Society of Chemistry. Kandjani, H. & Bernus, P., 2012. Enterprise Architecture Cybernetics for Complex Disaster Management: Reducing the Complexity of the Disaster and Emergency Services Using Extended Axiomatic Design Theory and Enterprise Architecture Principles. In Yan, L., Hong, C. & Wenzheng, L., eds. Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Emergency Management and Management Science, ICEMMS' 2012. Brisbane, Australia, 2012. Griffith University. Lekka, D.C., 2011. High reliability organisations: A review of the literature. Research Report. Buxton, Derbyshire: Health and Safety Laboratory Health and Safety Executive. Lindøe, P.H. & Olsen, O.E., 2009. Conflicting goals and mixed roles in risk regulation: a case study of the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate. Journal of Risk Research, vol. 12, no. 3-4, pp.427-41. O'Riordan, T. & Cameron, J., 1994. Interpreting the Precautionary Principle. London: Earthscan. Perrow, C., 2011. Normal Accidents: Living with High Risk Technologies. Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press. Pidgeon, N. & O'Leary, M., 2000. Man-made disasters: why technology and organizations (sometimes) fail. Safety Science, vol. 34, pp.15-30. Read More