From Meltdowns to Mass G
Complex
& Normal Ac
Live events are complex. Real-
ly, really complex. So far there are no prizes for
stating the blindingly obvious. However, when it
comes to making sense of these situations, academia has some interesting perspectives to offer
the events industry.
As far back as 1984, Charles Perrow was trying to
understand the disaster at Three Mile Island. In
doing so he established what he called Normal
Accident Theory: a situation where the systems involved were so complex and tightly coupled that
an accident was, perhaps, the inevitable outcome.
In “complexity”, Perrow described any system
where two or more discrete failures might interact
in unexpected ways. In “coupling” he referred to a
system where one element might have a “prompt
and major impact” on another.
So how do we get from nuclear meltdown to live
events? Once you start to dissect them, some of
the proceedings we manage exhibit both these
features in abundance.
All the time our industry deals with crowd dynamics scenarios, foul weather, temporary infrastructure and communications, staff unfamiliar with
their role or location, large-scale deployment of
team members with low levels of training, audiences who aren’t straight or sober, and so much
more. Any single one of these elements has the
potential to suffer a failure that might interact un30
expectedly with another part of the system. There
are so many variables for an event control room to
deal with – especially when you add the unpredictability of humanity into the mix – that it’s easy
to imagine the interaction of dozens of potential
accident scenarios over the course of just a single
evening. It’s Perrow’s “complexity” in a nutshell.
Now consider the ways in which the worst accidents in our industry have seen people lose their
lives: structural collapse, crushing injuries, compressive asphyxia, drug reactions and malicious
acts of violence. The commonality? The shocking
speed with which these events unfold, and in particular the way that a problem in one part of the
system can impact with ferocious rapidity on another. Remember Hillsborough: a multitude of errors compounded to result in the tragic outcome,
but key was that compressive asphyxia takes place
in less than two minutes. A deadly crowd surge
can come from nowhere and dissipate just as
quickly in seconds. A lone actor takes moments to
wield a firearm with devastating results.
Framed like this, it doesn’t take much to conceptualize large-scale events as exhibiting the facets
of Normal Accident Theory. But there’s plenty that
we can do to protect our co-workers and audiences from that which Perrow thought so inevitable.
Step one is to reduce the complexity wherever it
can be found: if the audience is moving between