Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 8
Technological Hazards, Disasters
and Accidents
Gianni Silei
Abstract Although some technological risks can be traced back to the ancient times,
it was between the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century that tech-
nical advancement and the process of industrialization posed the question of the
management of the technologies and of their possible disastrous consequences.
During these years there was an important change in approaching these issues:
from the inevitability of disasters to the adoption of policies of prevention and risk
management. This important change had as a consequence an increasing role of
public institutions (national governments, agencies and authorities) in the control,
prevention and emergency management of technological disasters. According to this
new approach, scientists, the experts and the technicians that were required to
“
predict
”
using their special knowledge technological disasters, became central
rst post-war period represents an important turning point because this
new and modern attitude towards technological hazards reached its full maturity. The
spreading of new technologies also facilitated by the process of industrialization and
the emergence of the era of mass consumptions, inuenced a new discipline that,
from different approaches, tried to address and resolve the various aspects of tech-
nological threats. Born in the postwar period, the disastrology and in general policies
to ensure safety, found a systematic application after the Second World War. The
increasing complexity of certain technologies used in industry, in the production of
energy, in the transport sector and especially the potentially catastrophic conse-
quences of technological accidents, imposed an additional effort in the
gures. The
eld of
regulation, prevention and management of emergencies. In some cases, such as the
atomic energy for civilian use, an increasing role was played by national and inter-
national agencies that were created during this period. Since the 1970s but especially
in the following decade, several major accidents (Three Mile Island, Seveso, Bhopal,
Chernobyl, Fukushima, the environmental disasters caused by oil tankers) put for-
ward the need for a standardization of rules and a greater international co-operation.
The globalization of technological hazards at the time of the so-called
”
has fostered a more interdisciplinary approach to the issues of technological disasters.
“
risk society
