TABLE OF CONTENTS Terms relating to incident investigation are often used differently by different organizations and by personnel within an organization. Even investigators might use different terms. This glossary clarifies the meaning of these terms, which are listed alphabetically to help the reader search for terms within the list. Figure A.1 shows the interrelationship among some of the various terms defined here.
Casual factors are gaps in the performance of equipment or front-line personnel. A performance gap is the difference between the desired performance of the equipment or human and the actual performance of the equipment or human.
For a typical incident, there are multiple causal factors. Causal factors are identified during the first stage of the analysis (see Section 4). Each causal factor is an event or condition that we want to eliminate. For each causal factor, underlying causes are identified and recommendations are developed.
