Oakland, California, 1989

HRO Workshops at United Steelworker's Health, Safety and Environment Conference in Houston, Texas, August 2009

CCRM Associates Earl Carnes (Department of Energy - DOE) and Bill Hoyle (independent consultant) presented two workshops on high reliability organizing (HRO) at the United Steelworkers Union's Health, Safety and Environment Conferenc in Houston, Texas, in August 2009. A Total of 74 people attended one of the identical workshops.  The participants came from diverse industries and included both union and management members of facility safety committees.  The response was very positive.  The people most interested came from the oil refinery sector.  Carnes and Hoyle are in ongoing discussions with the Steelworkers Union about ways to promote HRO in DOE facilities represented by the union.

About CCRM

The Center for Catastrophic Risk Management (CCRM) is part of the University's response to recent disasters—and efforts to anticipate future calamities. CCRM was started by the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society, and has become part of the Institute of Business and Economic Research to emphasize the interdisciplinary nature of its research team.

Created in September 2005 after Hurricane Katrina, CCRM includes faculty in Civil and Environmental Engineering with backgrounds in levee failure (New Orleans), structural failure (World Trade Center), earthquakes, and design of high reliability systems. They are joined by faculty from Architecture, City & Regional Planning, Business, Law and Public Policy.

The goal: to improve the safety and resilience of physical and social infrastructure in the face of disaster. The mission: through multidisciplinary research, teaching and outreach, to help societies cope better with catastrophic hazards including hurricane, tornado, flood, tsunami, earthquake, volcano, landslide, wildfire, pandemic, industrial accident, chemical spill, blackout and terrorism attack. Preparations for catastrophic events come in many forms: disaster prevention and preparedness; urban infrastructure renewal and resilience; emergency decision-making; public health crisis management; recovery of impacted communities; domestic security; environmental management after crisis.

Download a copy of the CCRM Brochure

CCRM Brochure

View Rune Storesund's poster on Utilization of Terrestrial LiDAR in Reliability-Based Levee Operation and Maintenance. Available in Adobe PDF and Macromedia Flash format.

CCRM at the Monterey Naval Postgraduate School

From Left to Right:
Dr. Karl A. van Bibber (NPS), Simon Bradley (VP of EADS Innovative Works), CDR Joseph Sullivan (MOVES), Professor Anthony Ciavarelli (MOVES), Dr. Anthony Hare (UC Berkeley Center for Catastrophic Risk Management), and Peter Martelli (UC Berkeley doctoral candidate).

This Photo was taken during the January 16th 2009 visit to discuss potential areas of collaboration between EADS, the MOVES Institute, and UC Berkeley. During the course of that visit and discussion, it was decided that a collaborative team would be formed between these participants to develop a “proof – of – concept” demonstration of a Command Control and Communications (C3)Training System. EADS will sponsor this R&D effort, pending acceptance of a proposal in progress.

The MOVES (Modeling, Virtual Environments, and Simulation) Institute has created educational and research programs supporting simulation technologies used by the Defense Department and Homeland Security to train personnel and to analyze systems for operatinal effectiveness. They are the creators of the video game "America's Army".