More large accidents through complexity?

Area of Science:

• Societal risk analysis
• Fire safety engineering
• Industrial safety

Background:

• Modern society is often characterized by complexity, leading to perceptions of increased high-level risk-taking.
• A hypothesis suggests that increasing societal complexity leads to progressively worse outcomes, even from minor incidents.
• Fires, particularly industrial fires, are significant agents of disruption and economic loss.

Purpose of the Study:

• To test the hypothesis that increasing societal complexity leads to higher-level risks, specifically examining fire incidents in Sweden.
• To analyze whether the economic impact of the most severe fires is increasing proportionally with overall fire damage costs.
• To evaluate the validity of the 'worst things getting worse' hypothesis in the context of fire-related risks.

Main Methods:

• Analysis of historical fire incident data in Sweden, focusing on both direct (damage costs) and indirect (production standstill) economic impacts.
• Comparison of the cost of industrial fires versus residential fires.
• Statistical examination of the proportion of damage costs attributed to the most severe fires over time.

Main Results:

• The damage cost of the worst fires, measured by insurance payments, did not constitute an increasing proportion of overall fire damage costs in Sweden.
• Industrial fires represent a significant economic burden, costing approximately three times more than residential fires.
• The hypothesis of increasing high-level risks due to complexity was not supported by the direct cost data of severe fires.

Conclusions:

• The potential for societal complexity to generate large-scale adverse events may have been overstated, at least concerning fire incidents in Sweden.
• While industrial fires are economically dominant, the severity of the worst incidents does not appear to be escalating disproportionately.
• Further investigation is needed to ascertain if indirect costs, such as production standstill, align with the complexity-risk hypothesis.