Normal Accidents – Living with High-Risk Technologies by Charles Perrow provides some helpful insights on how high-tech disasters occur that can be of value to school safety professionals. The book details how failures occur in complex environments such as nuclear power plants, chemical production facilities and other sites where life safety is among the top concerns. The author details how in spite of numerous layers of safety strategies, accidents and near misses still occur with some regularity.
The points made by Charles Perrow offer a number of insights to large school systems and universities which can be prone to somewhat similar safety failures. Though a highly technical book focused on extremely complex systems, it will prove a worthwhile read to those who are heavily involved with school safety such as school safety and security directors, campus police chiefs, school safety expert witnesses, state and federal school safety officials and others who are deeply into the topic of school safety.