ABSTRACT
In August 12, 2000, the Russian Oscar-class submarine Kursk (K-141) sank during a navy manoeuvre in the Barents Sea killing all 118 personnel on board. The vessel was powered by two nuclear reactors and carry nuclear missiles which can be armed. The disaster is well documented and encompasses many socio-technical elements influencing the sequence of events finally leading to wreckage. For this, the disaster is considered as an archetypical event which might highlight the advantages as well as the limitations of resilience assessment approaches, e.g. in comparison with established risk assessment methodology. For this the paper starts with results of a literature survey with resilience metrics and areas of technical applications. The Kursk disaster is reviewed by available literature and research reports by Root Cause Analysis. The causing aspects (events, procedures, human factors, etc.) are then structured and classified according to their relevance and impact on vessel’s resilience. In a next step, these aspects are contrasted to the risk assessment approach as defined, e.g. by ISO 31000. The methodological juxta-position is intended to characterize the maturity level of resilience analysis in a real world framework as well as to elaborate major differences in validity of the underlying system analysis concepts. Finally, the pros and cons of the reviewing approach are discussed.
