High Reliability Organizing for (HRO) Disasters – Disaster Ecology and the Color of Noise

Abstract

The frequencies of stochastic noise inherent to the environment can be described as colors. The various colors of noise refer to the disruptive potential of stochastic energy within the environment and its characteristics. The meaning of the type of noise lies in the unpredictability of events and the 'forcing functions' of energy. That is the strength of the environment to force a system or population to respond. For human activity, the color types correlate to problem characteristics such as leadership-line authority coupling, well-structured, ill-structured, and embedded problems. When the noise color changes, forcing functions and the types of problems also change, increasing characteristics necessary for adaptation or altering characteristics in unexpected ways through relaxed selection. The noise process applies equally to nursing homes, NICUs, and public safety and is independent of timescale or magnitude. We need not characterize normal environmental variation differently from catastrophes.