Reviews for Resilience Engineering in Practice

Although risk management has brought greater safety to socio-technical systems, a new approach is still strongly needed. Erik Hollnagel’s excellent book offers the right approach; that resilient behaviour by people leads to stable systems. Those searching for a more profound understanding of system safety must read this book as it is a practical guide to this new approach.

Akinori Komatsubara, Waseda University, Japan

With crises abounding, the concept of resilience is more relevant than ever. Manifold examples from a variety of high-risk industries provide insights into the four basic requirements for resilience: responding, monitoring, anticipating, and learning. Tools are presented that support the assessment of these requirements as well as their promotion, be it by training emergency management, handling fatigue of system operators, supporting preventive maintenance, providing better rules for managing conflicting goals, or improving incident reporting. The book, by Erik Hollnagel and his colleagues, will be a great resource for system designers and decision-makers in organizations in their endeavours to keep the uncertainties and complexities of our world at bay.

Gudela Grote, ETH Zürich, Switzerland

‘Be prepared to be unprepared.’ How do you do that? By absorbing the evocative data, nuanced terminology, sustained guidance, and broad applications summarized here. Resilience is about more than engineering as becomes clear in these descriptions of the actual, critical, potential, and factual events that unfold when ‘disturbances fall outside the operational envelope.’ Resilience engineering is a hot topic. Here is the one book that shows you why!

Karl E. Weick, University of Michigan, USA