Towards a safer world

Issued: Thu, 15 Jul 2010 10:05:00 BST

Global security is a term often used by politicians and the media, but what does it actually mean?

Whether long-term global security in its truest sense will ever be achieved is debatable; millions of people around the world continue to lose their lives not only through disease and hunger, but also at the expense of others seeking to secure their own safety and wellbeing. It seems likely that many of these struggles will intensify as a growing world population competes for scarce resources with diminishing reserves of land, energy and water. But ultimately, global security is a noble goal – and one which a number of researchers at the University of Glasgow are earnestly striving towards.

For computing scientist Professor Chris Johnson, studying systems failures and understanding how we learn from them is his way of contributing towards a safer world.

He chairs the Scientific Advisory Committee for Europe’s €2 billion air traffic modernisation programme, and was a member of the evaluation panel for the Home Office’s Innovative Science & Technology in Counter Terrorism (INSTINCT) programme. He was also commissioned to provide the European Railways Agency with guidelines on ‘best practices’ in accident and incident reporting across member states.

‘It is an unfortunate fact of life,’ says Professor Johnson, ‘that we often learn best from mistakes, accidents and disasters.

‘What amazes me so much about systems failures is our over-reliance on technology. As a society, we depend so much on technology that we often do not even notice the vulnerabilities until it is too late. And when technology fails there is always a sense of surprise.’

One interesting example of this is the use of night-vision equipment by pilots in the United States military in places like Iraq and Afghanistan.

Accident figures compiled by the US military found the accident rate involving night-vision equipment was 15.8 accidents per 100,000 hours of night-time flight in its helicopter fleet compared to 9.3 for unaided vision – a completely counter-intuitive result. When senior US military officers asked Professor Johnson to look into the reasons for this, he concluded that better training was required for those using night-vision equipment, that better risk assessment should take place before the equipment is deployed, and that night-vision should be used in closer conjunction with technologies such as the Global Positioning System.

‘What seems to be happening with night-vision systems is that it gives pilots a false sense of security,’ says Professor Johnson. ‘They rely on the technology too much.

‘That’s not to say we shouldn’t use technology to help us manage risk,’ he adds. ‘I don’t want to imply that technology is at the root of all accidents. It can help prevent them and reduce their impact. However, when people’s lives are at stake we should always try to anticipate failure and try to avoid that sense of surprise when technology fails.’

The Glasgow Evacuation Simulator, a computer program developed by Professor Johnson, is designed to do just this. The only one of its kind in the UK, it can model how crowds leave a building as a result of fire or respond to the detonation of an improvised explosive device and was included by the Home Office in its INSTINCT programme. Professor Johnson’s group is currently working with organisations like British Transport Police to validate the software, by simulating what might happen if IED attacks from other areas of the globe were to be launched on targets in Scotland. This tool is intended to help security and emergency services prepare for future threats and reduce the sense of surprise that is mentioned in the 9/11 and London bombing inquiries.

Failures in both safety and security are a combination of a variety of factors – technological, human and environmental.

When electricity blackouts struck Italy in September 2003 they resulted in the loss of power to 56 million homes for up to two days. They were initially caused by hot weather making pylon wires in neighbouring Switzerland expand and sag where they touched overgrown vegetation.

This resulted in automatic systems rerouting electricity through other parts of the network which subsequently tripped as the extra loading created a domino effect across member states.

‘Something as simple as failing to cut back vegetation around the pylons caused this huge problem. But you could argue the problem went even further back, to the deregulation of the energy market,’ says Professor Johnson.

‘By providing market access, the European Commission and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission encouraged bulk energy transfers from low-cost generators that were some distance away from the point of use. The terms governing these transfers arguably did not adequately consider the costs associated with infrastructure reliability.’

This kind of incident illustrates perfectly the different factors that can play a part in an emergency or disaster and how the effects can cascade with each trigger.

Learning from accidents is one way of reducing the chances of their future occurrence, and one project Professor Johnson is currently working on is with the European Railways Agency to develop guidelines on ‘best practices’ in accident and incident reporting across member states. ‘Today we have trains running across Europe so you need transparency in investigation techniques so that if someone makes a recommendation, every country can be satisfied the process has been robust. For example, the recent derailment in Viareggio in Italy involved wagons from Poland and Germany that were maintained by the European branch of a US company. This kind of joint approach is going to become more common, for example as European legislation demands inter-operability in the energy and transportation sectors. Sadly, I think we will see an increasing number of accidents as safety budgets are coming under increasing economic pressures.’

Less than a week after Professor Johnson presented his investigation guidelines, the European Railways Agency team was called on to help identify the causes of the Halle collision outside Brussels.

• Find out more: School of Computing Science