Blue Screen Of Death (BSOD) Oil Rig's Computer

A computer that monitored drilling operations on the Deepwater Horizon had been freezing with a BSOD prior to the explosion that sand the oil rig. In his testimony, Michael Williams, the chief electronics technician aboard the Transocean-owned Deepwater Horizon, said that the rig's safety alarm had been habitually switched to a bypass mode to avoid waking up the crew with middle-of-the-night warnings. Williams said that a computer control system in the drill shack would still record high gas levels or a fire, but it would not trigger warning sirens. He also said that five weeks before the explosion, he had been called to check a computer system that monitored and controlled drilling. The machine had been locking up for months. You'd have no data coming through. With the computer frozen, the driller would not have access to crucial data about what was going on in the well. The disaster left 11 dead and resulted in the largest oil spill in US history. Source Gregg Keizer, Computer world, 26 Jul 2010.

This illustrates an issue between human-machine interaction. Many of the biggest disasters (Three-mile island and Chernobyl) resulted from humans not believing the indications of the system and disabling safety measures.

As an IT professional, what is your responsibility in this type of situation? Try to be realistic. Hind sight is always 20-20 so try to put yourself in the shoes of the folks on the platform day to day. Does that change your perspective?