Complexity, what is, how do we deal with it, and how does it contribute to risk.
Those who cannot remember the past of human factors are doomed to repeat it…
With apologies to the philosopher George Santayana, I’ll make the point that the BMW Head Up Display technology is in fact not the unalloyed blessing premised by BMW in their marketing material.
No, not the alternative name for this blog. 
I’ve just given the post Pitch ladders and unusual attitude a solid rewrite adding some new material and looking a little more deeply at some of the underlying safety myths.
A bit more on Boeing’s battery woes…
The NTSB has released more pictures of the JAL battery, and there are some interesting conclusions that can be drawn from the evidence to date.
Boeing’s Dreamliner program runs into trouble with lithium ion batteries
Lithium batteries performance in providing lightweight, low volume power storage has made them a ubiquitous part of modern consumer life. And high power density also makes them attractive in applications, such as aerospace, where weight and space are at a premium. Unfortunately lithium batteries are also very unforgiving if operated outside their safe operating envelope and can fail in a spectacularly energetic fashion called a thermal runaway (1), as occurred in the recent JAL and ANA 787 incidents.
The Buncefield report: Or overlooking the obvious
Why sometimes simpler is better in safety engineering.
While reading the 2006 Buncefield investigation report I came across this interesting statement.
“Such sensors are in widespread use and a number are available that have been certified for use in SIL2/3 applications in accordance with BS EN 61511 (1) .”
Buncefield Major Incident Investigation Report, Volume 2 Annex 4, p 28 (2006).
I tend towards the integrative rather than reductionist view of engineering and science. I'm interested in emergence, networks, relationships and interfaces as they apply to safety.
