Trust and Humility in an Ethics of Resilience Engineering

Risk is an inevitability of the modern condition, deeply woven into technological society and the built environment. An ethical approach to engineering requires looking beyond the technological calculation of risks to ask probing questions about impacts on individuals and society in terms of equity, security, personal safety, and the environment. The vulnerability of complex technological and constructed systems has been all too vividly demonstrated. In August 2003, for example, the great Northeast blackout, triggered when a sagging power line touched some tree limbs in northeastern Ohio, was rapidly complicated by human error, software issues, and equipment failures, [leading] to the most widespread blackout in North American history. More than 50 million people across eight northeastern US states and parts of Canada were left without power for at least 24 hours, and many of them were in the dark for weeks (Taylor 2018).