In the early 1990’s, an interdisciplinary group of University of California, Berkeley faculty began meeting regularly to explore how organizations managed to operate under conditions of high risk and uncertainty. This bold but curious group included faculty from engineering, physics, business, law, urban planning, and political science. Although their disciplines and training differed, they shared a keen interest in learning how organizations managed to perform difficult functions under dangerous conditions with a degree of high reliability. Not content with reading about these organizations, these researchers sought to learn from direct observation how nuclear power plants, naval aircraft carriers and electricity-generating companies provided services that were essential to a functioning society. The conceptual framework of “highly reliable organizations” developed from years of discussion, observation, and reflection on the actual performance of such organizations in different fields of practice.
These discussions crystallized into a collective decision to establish a formal research center at Berkeley after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans in 2005, revealing to the world the lack of reliability of human organizations in managing the technical infrastructure that made that critical port city function in a fragile ecosystem. Led initially by engineering faculty, the Center for Catastrophic Risk Management (CCRM) was established as an interdisciplinary center that recognized the sociotechnical components of risk. As an organized research unit of the University of California, Berkeley, CCRM applied for grants from the National Science Foundation and other sources, providing funding for graduate students to engage directly in research. As it gained recognition from practicing organizations such as the California Energy Commission and the California Public Utilities Commission, CCRM secured contracts from the CEC for analyzing organizational performance to recommend changes to increase reliability under dynamic, difficult operating conditions. CCRM expanded its scope to work internationally as well, forming consulting and collaborative relationships with organizations in France, Norway, and Japan.
In today’s dynamic, interconnected society, CCRM is changing again. The focus is no longer on how single organizations manage to perform critical functions in highly difficult conditions, but how networks of organizations form and reform across sectoral and jurisdictional boundaries to recognize and mitigate massive threats. Practicing the principles of adaptation and learning from sociotechnical change on which it was founded, CCRM is now moving into a wider sphere of research and discovery, seeking to focus an interdisciplinary lens on emerging risks to anticipate and mitigate potential catastrophes.