Based on the accident research and management practices of oil and gas pipelines, the characteristics and the quantitative description of the accident/failure are set up. Several characteristics are summarized which clearly describe the essential prosperities of the accident. Fragility, anti-fragility, and integrity are used as an index to describe the state of accident, which provides a new way of evaluating and describing accident, different from the traditional accident assessment. The understanding and the evaluation of the nature of accident become clearer. Accident cause theory is the basic theory of cognition and prevention of failure. In this chapter, based on the analysis of characteristics and limitations of some accident cause theories, and comprehension of characteristics of failure and systematic statistics, a new systematic accident cause theory is proposed, named by analogy with “tree-type.” This theory provides a systematical supplement of accident cause theories.
Part of the book: Failure Analysis