Accident analysis is carried out in order to determine the cause or causes of an accident or series of accidents so as to prevent further incidents of a similar kind. It is also known as accident investigation. It may be performed by a range of experts, including forensic scientists, forensic engineers or health and safety advisers. Accident investigators, particularly those in the aircraft industry, are colloquially known as "tin-kickers".

Sequence

Accident analysis is performed in four steps:

1. Fact gathering: After an accident happened a forensic process starts to gather all possibly relevant facts that may contribute to understanding the accident.
2. Fact Analysis: After the forensic process has been completed or at least delivered some results, the facts are put together to give a "big picture." The history of the accident is reconstructed and checked for consistency and plausibility.
3. Conclusion Drawing: If the accident history is sufficiently informative, conclusions can be drawn about causation and contributing factors.
4. Counter-measures: In some cases the development of counter-measures is desired or recommendations have to be issued to prevent further accidents of the same kind.

Methods

There exist numerous forms of Accident Analysis methods. These can be divided into three categories:

1. Causal Analysis uses the principle of causality to determine the course of events. Though people casually speak of a "chain of events", results from Causal Analysis usually have the form of directed a-cyclic graphs-the nodes being events and the edges the cause-effect relations. Methods of Causal Analysis differ in their respective notion of causation.
2. Expert Analysis relies on the knowledge and experience of field experts. This form of analysis usually lacks a rigorous (formal/semiformal) methodological approach. This usually affects falsify-ability and objectivity of analyses. This is of importance when conclusions are heavily disputed among experts.
3. Organizational Analysis relies on systemic theories of organization. Most theories imply that if a system's behaviour stayed within the bounds of the ideal organization then no accidents can occur. Organizational Analysis can be falsified and results from analyses can be checked for objectivity. Choosing an organizational theory for accident analysis comes from the assumption that the system to be analysed conforms to that theory.

See also

Accident analysis methods

• Accident
  Accident
  An accident or mishap is an unforeseen and unplanned event or circumstance, often with lack of intention or necessity. It implies a generally negative outcome which may have been avoided or prevented had circumstances leading up to the accident been recognized, and acted upon, prior to its...
  
  
• Debugging
  Debugging
  Debugging is a methodical process of finding and reducing the number of bugs, or defects, in a computer program or a piece of electronic hardware, thus making it behave as expected. Debugging tends to be harder when various subsystems are tightly coupled, as changes in one may cause bugs to emerge...
  
  
• Failure mode and effects analysis
  Failure mode and effects analysis
  A failure modes and effects analysis is a procedure in product development and operations management for analysis of potential failure modes within a system for classification by the severity and likelihood of the failures...
  
  
• Forensic engineering
  Forensic engineering
  Forensic engineering is the investigation of materials, products, structures or components that fail or do not operate or function as intended, causing personal injury or damage to property. The consequences of failure are dealt with by the law of product liability. The field also deals with...
  
  
• Forensic science
• Why-Because Analysis
  Why-Because analysis
  Why–because analysis is a method for accident analysis. It is independent of application domain and has been used to analyse, among others, aviation-, railway-, marine- and computer related accidents and incidents. It is mainly used as an after the fact analysis method...
  
  

Related Disciplines

• Safety engineering
  Safety engineering
  Safety engineering is an applied science strongly related to systems engineering / industrial engineering and the subset System Safety Engineering...
  
  
• Human factors
  Human factors
  Human factors science or human factors technologies is a multidisciplinary field incorporating contributions from psychology, engineering, industrial design, statistics, operations research and anthropometry...
  
  , Human reliability
  Human reliability
  Human reliability is related to the field of human factors engineering and ergonomics, and refers to the reliability of humans in fields such as manufacturing, transportation, the military, or medicine...
  
  , and Pilot error
  Pilot error
  Pilot error is a term used to describe the cause of an accident involving an airworthy aircraft where the pilot is considered to be principally or partially responsible...
  
  

External links

• Acci-Maps
• Safety through Organisational Learning (SOL)
• Systems-Theoretic Accident Model and Process (STAMP)
• U.S. National Transportation Safety Board
• Why-Because Analysis (WBA)