Evaluation of error across natural gas pipeline incidents

Abstract

This paper demonstrates how qualitative analysis can be a novel means of investigating theories of error and causation in natural gas pipeline incidents. Qualitative analysis offers unique opportunities to understand process, interactions, and the role of context in identifying active error and latent conditions in incident causation. Through the coding of text from 24 onshore natural gas pipeline incident reports on leaks and explosions in the United States and Canada, our findings reveal a proportion of active and latent errors consistent with other hazardous infrastructure contexts (roughly 3:1 latent-active ratio across 817 coded errors). These findings underscore the robustness of extant error theory and support the argument for documenting multiple, connected causes of disaster in aggregate. Conclusions highlight the utility of in-depth case analyses and critique present pipeline incident database aggregation. Our interpretation provides a means to convey complex causation in aggregate form thus enabling more nuanced future qualitative and qualitative analyses.