Blog

I suggested in part 1 that imperfect people are normal and perfect people are a figment of our collective imagination.   This is a catchy idea but I am sure the reality is that personal qualities exist on a scale…
Read more

The enduring nature of Murphy’s reputation is fascinating in its own right.  I rather like the idea that the essence of risk engineering can be expressed by a household name.  Whether what we know as his law is in fact…
Read more

There are two fundamental aspects of risk and its control that are literally household words.  The first is the safety valve. This small item of risk engineering would have come to prominence in the early days of steam and it…
Read more

This topic is only going to grow, as might be expected.  I read a newspaper report (i newspaper, United Kingdom 18th July 2016) of the first known fatal accident involving an autonomous car, a Tesla, the software in which was unable to distinguish…
Read more

Since early 2010 I have been keeping a record of the cases that make headlines, at least the headlines I see.  My sources are the TV news and national newspapers in both Australia and the UK.  At present I have…
Read more

My source of information for this article is a Scientific American article. This extraordinary story began on October 23rd 2015 at the Canyon Gas Storage Field “the largest underground Methane storage in the Western United States”.  Evidently large quantities of gas…
Read more

THE CASE The tailings dam failure at an iron ore mine operated by Samarco (jointly owned by BHP Billiton and Vale) in the Bento Rodrigues district of Brazil on 5th November 2015 has been much in the news.  One view is that…
Read more

Something in a BBC news report on this derailment caught my eye – the statement made to the media by Amtrak management: Amtrak boss Joseph Boardman said on Thursday that the agency’s goal is to “fully understand what happened and…
Read more