Typological thinking

Typological-morphological concept, 10 Typological species concept, 10 Typological thinking, 9, 12... 

Groundwater Quality Monitoring The Overriding Importance of Hydrogeologic Typology (and Need for 4D Thinking)... 

When looking for something to measure, counting discrete events is an attractive option, not least if they are conspicuous in some way. It seems obvious that we can count various types of events, such as accidents, incidents, near misses, etc. - provided that they can be defined in an operational sense. So if the number of things that go wrong are taken to represent safety - or rather, the absence of safety - then safety can be measured. Problems arise, however, when we think of safety as a dynamic non-event. One reason is that we do not have a distinct typology or taxonomy of non-events at our disposal. Another is that it is impossible to observe, let alone count, something that does not happen. 

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