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Schmidt et al. J Surveill Secur Saf 2020;1:1-15 Journal of Surveillance,
DOI: 10.20517/jsss.2019.02 Security and Safety

Original Article Open Access

Learning and unlearning from disasters: an analysis
of the Virginia Tech, USA shooting and the Lion Air

610 Airline crash

Bianca Schmidt , Ashraf Labib , Sara Hadleigh-Dunn 3
2
1
1 Strategy, Enterprise and Innovation, Faculty of Business and Law, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth PO1 3DE, United
Kingdom.
2 Operations and Systems Management, Faculty of Business and Law, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth PO1 3DE, United
Kingdom.
3 Strategy, Enterprise and Innovation, Faculty of Business and Law, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth PO1 3DE, United
Kingdom.

Correspondence to: Prof. Ashraf Labib, For Operations and Systems Management, Faculty of Business and Law, University of
Portsmouth, Portsmouth PO1 3DE, United Kingdom. E-mail: ashraf.labib@port.ac.uk

How to cite this article: Schmidt B, Labib A, Hadleigh-Dunn S. Learning and unlearning from disasters: an analysis of the Virginia
Tech, USA shooting and the Lion Air 610 Airline crash. J Surveill Secur Saf 2020;1:1-15. http://dx.doi.org/10.20517/jsss.2019.02

Received: 24 Dec 2019 First Decision: 10 Mar 2020 Revised: 22 Mar 2020 Accepted: 7 Apr 2020 Available online: 10 Sep 2020

Academic Editor: Michael G. Pecht Copy Editor: Jing-Wen Zhang Production Editor: Jing Yu

Abstract
Aim: The aim of this paper is to explore whether and how far organisations learn from failures.

Methods: The paper reviews the current literature about organisational learning and theories of learning
from failures, where learning here implies change of practice, and use of modelling techniques to inform
recommendations to prevent repetition of similar incidents. Further, it analyses two case studies related to aspects
of security and safety: the Virginia Tech Shooting in 2007 and the Lion Air 610 crash in 2018. Both case studies
address the concept of learning from failures. In doing so, an analysis of the root causes and vulnerabilities through
the methods of Fault Tree Analysis and Reliability Block Diagram is conducted to identify lessons to be learned.

Results: Findings are intended to stimulate organisational learning and improve organisational processes to
mitigate disasters from happening again.

Conclusion: The value of this study is that aspects of learning and unlearning from failures have been identified for
the cases used. Expectation for future studies is to extend the proposed methodology to other cases in the fields
of surveillance, security and safety.
© The Author(s) 2020. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use,
sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, for any purpose, even commercially, as long
as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license,
and indicate if changes were made.

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