The tripod method is a way of conducting incident analysis. It is mostly used for high risk, complex incidents, since it is a very extensive and detailed method. Training is highly recommended when using the tripod method.
A Tripod Beta tree is built in three steps. The first step is to ask the question: ‘what happened?’. All the events that happened in the incident are listed as a chain of events. The next step is to identify the barriers that failed to stop this chain of events. The question that is asked in this step is: ‘How did it happen?’. When all the events and the failed barriers in between are identified, the reason for failure of these barriers is analyzed. The last question for this step is: ‘Why did it happen?’. For each of the failed barriers a causation path is identified.
All the items that appear in the Tripod Beta method are explained in more detail below.