Failure Prevention and Crises Management in Technology and Business

Risk assessment techniques have been developed and performed in industries such as nuclear, space and defence. Therefore, the experience and tools available for risk assessment are still largely domain-specific. There is a need for general systematic instructions not linked to a specific industry, covering prediction, prevention and mitigation of failures and accidents. There are several reasons for this.

First, health and safety instructions in technology are literally written ‘in blood’, because they emerge from the analysis of accidents that have already happened. For example, a warning label with the words “Keep away from small children” has cost at least one accident or even a life. Often, innovation and advanced design focus on the risks in marketing, while ‘fool proof’ measures are implemented in instructions on what a user should not do. But in fact the whole design of a product should be aimed at preventing or mitigating any possible harm to the user.

Second, the high complexity of modern technological systems is the source of possible failures cf. the statement: “If each part of a configuration is safe, the configuration is safe”. This is not true for complex multifunctional systems. The application of contemporary risk assessment procedures in complex systems is limited due to the lack of risk assessment methods used in contexts where several complex systems work together or start to counteract each other, causing undesirable (emergent) system effects.

Third, there are no instructions on how to run a business safely. In the literature, only few techniques are available for preventing, predicting and mitigating crises. In the current conditions of climate change and high economic uncertainty, this is very important for businesses of all sizes. The key effort in a risk assessment is to structure the scenarios that link a set of initial conditions with a set of undesired consequences, each with a probability of occurrence. In a highly changeable and uncertain environment, it is necessary to adjust such a strategy.

Course leader

Dr Olga Bogatyreva

Target group

Master's level

Fee info

EUR 277: EU/EEA citizens
EUR 2489: NON-EU/EEA citizens

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