Evaluation of error across natural gas pipeline incidents
Name
Risk Analysis - 2022 - Williams - Evaluation of error across natural gas pipeline incidents.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
768.96 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
168a43c4d8f3bbf598271756a956c908
Author(s)
Williams, Darien Alexander
Glasmeier, Amy K
Date Issued
June 26, 2022
Journal
Risk Analysis
Publisher
Wiley
Citation
Williams, Darien Alexander and Glasmeier, Amy K. 2022. "Evaluation of error across natural gas pipeline incidents." Risk Analysis.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
This paper demonstrates how qualitative analysis can be a novel means of investigating theories of error and causation in natural gas pipeline incidents. Qualitative analysis offers unique opportunities to understand process, interactions, and the role of context in identifying active error and latent conditions in incident causation. Through the coding of text from 24 onshore natural gas pipeline incident reports on leaks and explosions in the United States and Canada, our findings reveal a proportion of active and latent errors consistent with other hazardous infrastructure contexts (roughly 3:1 latent-active ratio across 817 coded errors). These findings underscore the robustness of extant error theory and support the argument for documenting multiple, connected causes of disaster in aggregate. Conclusions highlight the utility of in-depth case analyses and critique present pipeline incident database aggregation. Our interpretation provides a means to convey complex causation in aggregate form thus enabling more nuanced future qualitative and qualitative analyses.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Urban Studies and Planning
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License 4.0
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1111/risa.13981
