Applying MORT to the analysis of Tabasco's flooding

Natural disasters are increasing alarmingly worldwide in recent years. They have killed millions of people, and adversely affected the life of at least one billion people. Given this, natural disasters present a great challenge to society today concerning how they are to be mitigated so as to produce an acceptable risk is a question which has come to the fore in dramatic ways recently. The paper addresses the following question: what could be learnt from natural disasters? The paper presents some preliminary results of the analysis of Tabasco’s flooding in Mexico, by the application of the MORT technique. In November 2007 the State of Tabasco was flooded by 80% and it is believed that al least one million people were left homeless. On the other hand, the MORT technique may be regarded as a structured checklist in the form of a complex ‘fault-tree’ model that is intended to ensure that all aspects of an organization’s management are looked into when assessing the possible causes of an incident. Moreover, the MORT has been applied extensively to the analysis of past failure of sociotechnical systems; this is the first time that it has been applied to the case of natural disasters. A number of organizational failures have been highlighted by the model. It is hoped that by conducting such analysis lessons can be learnt so that the impact of natural disasters such as Tabasco’s flooding can be mitigated in the future.