ABSTRACT
The chapter presents examples of three different disasters that have occurred over the past decades. The first example concerns the collapse of a bridge on 1 August 2007, a stationary system that is part of the transportation infrastructure. In this case, the cause of the catastrophe was not unpredictable forces of nature, but the lack of a comprehensive analysis of the entire complex system and all processes taking place in it, both in terms of transport, repair, and logistics. The second example applies to the Three Mile Island nuclear accident on 28 March 1979. This catastrophe inspired Charls Perrow to develop the Theory of Normal Accidents, one of the conclusions of which is that human cognitive limits are important in causing system accidents. In the third example, an analysis was performed of the damage from the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami on 11 March 2011. This example shows that classical probabilistic methods used in the assessment of extreme events of the natural disaster type cannot be the basis for decision-making in the case of high-impact hazards. However, in these situations, methods based on the precautionary principle, as well as the extended resilience matrix should be used.
