One of the questions that helped precipitate the research on highly reliable socio-technical systems was: Why aren’t there more normal accidents, given technologies are so tightly coupled and interactive?
A symmetrical question has been posed by the high reliability research since then: Why aren’t there more real-time control rooms or operations centers, given there are so many reliability mandates, critical services and hazardous technologies?
One answer suggests itself: There are in fact more control rooms than people suppose, if the persisting dearth of control room research is any guide.
WHEN COMPLEX IS AS SIMPLE AS IT GETS 