Lecture 13 - Complex Technological Systems and Big Science
Science and Technological Systems
- Traditional engineering approach, people adapt to technology
- “Scientific management”: Frederick Winslow Taylor
- “Rationalized” work, management based on scientific laws
- Movement analysis: stopwatches and motion-picture cameras,
processes broken down into parts
- Repetitious & boring, but simple, less education for operators
- Established craftsmen displaced
Problems with Fitting the Worker to the Technology
- What about nuclear power and this approach?
- Fossil fuel plant model was dominant model of power distribution
when nuclear was introduced
- Complex tasks and information broken down into parts
- Information overload
- Capital intensity and constant operation
How Dangerous are Nuclear Reactors?
- How do you determine risk?
- 1960’s (PRA) probabilistic risk assessment
- (MCA) Maximum Credible Accident, rare but possible
- Long forecasting period, assumptions:
o Technological change
o TMI and Chernobyl?
- Paradox of information: additional information can add to safety in
regular operation, but take away in a crisis, when too much
information is given to be processed
- Automation masking knowledge
- Complexity and risk assessment
Normal Accidents Theory (Charles Perrow)
- Interactive complexity The components of complex systems can
interact in many ways to create accidents
- Interactive Coupling: Systems tightly linked so that they don’t allow
sufficient time to react to and analyse problems
The more complex a technology, the more ways something can go
wrong, and in a tightly coupled system the number of ways that
something can go wrong increases exponentially with the number
of components in the system. The complexity also makes the system
more vulnerable to error. Even a tiny mistake may push the system
to behave in strange ways, making it difficult for the operators to
understand what is happening and making it likely that they’ll
make further mistakes - Pool.
- Additional safety features often increase complexity
- Paradox of centralization: centralized control is needed to
coordinate complex systems, but individual control is often needed to
stop accidents (TMI control room)
- Perrow: chemical plants, space missions, genetic engineering, aircraft,
nuclear weapons, military early warning systems and nuclear power
plants will suffer regular accidents
- Nuclear power: cost of accidents far outweighs benefits
Possible Solutions for Risky Technology
Human-Centred Engineering
- Paradox of information: additional information can reduce safety in
a crisis, when too much information is given
- Information processing, general to specific, social and technological
fix
High-Reliability Organizations (HRO’s) & Management
- Traditional nuclear management is prescriptive:
o Multiple rules, followed strictly, nuclear navy origins
- Improved Management:
o Some organizations safely use complex technology
o Aircraft carrier: highly regulated and hierarchical (top down)
during regular operation, this changes:
… a second layer of structure emerges in times of stress,
overlaid on the first, and this one de-emphasizes rank or
position, emphasizes expertise, and places a great deal of
weight on communication and cooperation among units. The
purpose of the second structure is the same in both
organizations: to deal with the demands created by the
complexity of the system - Pool.
o Local authority
o No penalties for reporting problems
o Extensive communication between all levels
o HRO’s studied: carriers, some nuclear plants, air traffic control
systems, electric power)
o Social fix, change the way power plants are used
Inherent Safety and the Technological Fix
- Pool: engineer technologies so mistakes can be made without serious
accidents, technological fix
- Chemical industry: green chemistry, benign products, volume
- Nuclear industry: “Inherent” or “passive” safety systems
o US, 1990’s:150MW MHTGR (Modular High Temperature Gas
Reactor): ceramic fuel
- Problems: efficiency waste, fuel
Big Science
- Scale increase in: Industrialization, technology, globalization
- Science has grown exponentially
- 1 million scientists in US, 80-90 % of all scientists who have ever
lived alive today
- Doubling time for population and labour force 50 years, for scientific
population, 15 years
- Changing scientific expertise
- Science growing exponentially before WWII
Professionalization
- Past examples, independent scholars, court philosophers, gentlemen
scientists, inventors
- Science is a profession, national societies and international governing
bodies
- “Invisible college”, scientists that communicate, organize
conferences, contribute to journals, not spatially located
- International awards (Nobel Prize), political campaigning (Union of
Concerned Scientists), publishing
- PhD education, post-doctoral research, teaching
- Publication, multiple authors, core group of researchers
- 15% of research gets “pure science” funding from NSF
- Engineers and applied scientists vs. pure research scientists
Big Science Projects of the 20th Century
o The nuclear bomb, civilian nuclear power
o Computers
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o The Human Genome Project (HGP)
First significant big-science project WWII atomic bomb
Cost of scientific R+D rose after WWII, capital intensity
Military funding: computers, space program, accelerators
Industrial and government funding: HGP, funded by the Department
of Energy, various supercomputer projects
US federally funded university research: 500M (1935-36), 2.4 billion
(1960), 16.8 billion (1995)
Superconducting Supercollider (SSC)
o Particle acceleration to investigate matter
o Particle research and nuclear technology, funding
o SSC had less potential for practical applications
o Required billions in funding, cancelled
Pure research and economic limitations
Scientific Management
- Senior scientists as administrators
- Environmental concerns or social needs
- Unintended consequences, industrial revolution, automobile
- Nuclear waste, nuclear arsenal, chemical industry pollution, genetic
alteration of humans, animals and plants
The Role of the Public
- Lobbying, congress, public interest groups, clinical trials
- Environmental lobby and the courts in the US
- Yucca mountain nuclear waste disposal site
- As scientific projects increase in size and complexity:
o Resources, capital, interested groups, public resources
o Unexpected consequences
o Paradox of big science: public support, minority control and
understanding