The application of resilience engineering to human space flight

Johnson, C. , Herd, A. and Wolff, M. (2010) The application of resilience engineering to human space flight. In: International Association for the Advancement of Space Safety Conference, Huntsville, Alabama, 19-21 May 2010,

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Abstract

There is a concern that mishap reporting systems track information about previous anomalies but do little to protect against future failures. In contrast, the term ‘resilience engineering’ has been coined to describe techniques that identify the thousands of everyday positive actions that prevent accidents from occurring. This change of perspective poses significant theoretical and pragmatic challenges. Just as it can be difficult to identify the causes of previous failures, it is equally difficult to determine what went right and why. We cannot always be sure how close our successes came to failure. Resilience engineering has not previously been applied in any sustained way to space missions. This paper, therefore, uses resilience engineering concepts to analyse the many different ways in which successive crews responded to engineering challenges on the International Space Station (ISS).

Item Type:Conference Proceedings
Status:Published
Refereed:Yes
Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID:Johnson, Professor Chris
Authors: Johnson, C., Herd, A., and Wolff, M.
Subjects:Q Science > QA Mathematics > QA75 Electronic computers. Computer science
H Social Sciences > HV Social pathology. Social and public welfare
T Technology > TL Motor vehicles. Aeronautics. Astronautics
College/School:College of Science and Engineering > School of Computing Science
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Project CodeAward NoProject NamePrincipal InvestigatorFunder's NameFunder RefLead Dept
538791Method for configuration management in safety critical softwareChristopher JohnsonEngineering & Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)EP/I004289/1Computing Science