Generating hypotheses to explain accidents and other rare events
Ludwig Benner · Journal of Safety Research · 1978
This paper focuses on hypothesis generation. How does one generate propositions that can be tested by scientific methods? Multilinear events sequencing methodology can be useful for predictive study of rare events are phenomena. If one can except that accidents or multievent phenomena involving more than one actor, whose actions must occur in specified chronological sequence to achieve a harmful or other outcome of interest, it can readily be seen that if any of the events occur out of sequence, or not at all, the outcome being studied will not occur. Thus, the pattern of events describing the rare event phenomena can be studied. It is the occurrence of the event sets in the necessary relationship, that is rare, rather than the occurrence of the individual events within the set. If this concept is valid, it suggests new approaches for the accumulation of data about rare events in the form of event sets, rather than in the form of individual conditions are isolated events constituting the phenomenon. The manipulation of chronologically sequenced event sets in process flowchart form appears to hold more promise for understanding rare event's phenomena than the present approaches. In the field, the need for unifying theoretical framework to organize the event sets for research purposes can be shown to be increasingly urgent. Three general concepts of accident seem prevalent. They include: the as a single event; the as a single chain of events; and the as a branched chain of events. None of these is as acceptable as the proposed method that involves the simultaneous and sequential ordering of event sets. The application of probabilistic estimates of the frequency of occurrence of these event sets, provides an approach for predicting rare phenomena. Time are spatial logic tests, as well as traditional mathematical or other experimental methods, can then be used to validate hypotheses, without recourse to statistical inference.