Risk and Liability

Safety is the ever-present concern in engineering.

• Safety is the ever-present concern in engineering.
• How should engineers deal with issues of safety and risk, especially when they involve possible liability for harm?
• The risk of the 9/11 has to do with conformity to high technology and economical approach: The new construction techniques reduce construction costs for taller building, while lighter buildings require less massive (thus lighter) columns for comparable heights.
• The lighter columns made a difference that increased the vulnerability (risk) to both physical impact and fire damage, compared to the case of Empire State Building.

Problem of Safety

This illustrates an important fact:

Not only that engineering necessarily involves risks,

but also that risks change as technology changes.