Excursions (from normal behavior / limits) and incursions (beyond established parameters) are warnings of potential disaster, both terms used in various context

Excursions (from normal behavior / limits) and incursions (beyond established parameters) are warnings of potential disaster, both terms used in various contexts. There's a distribution of such events, usually following a power law in terms of scale or magnitude, and an increased rate of excursions/incursions is often a warning of systemic and procedural weaknesses which increase the risk of a catastrophic event. Amsterdam came within centimetres and/or hours of a tremendous crisis. Cutting that far into safety tolerances is an exceedingly bad sign. I recently re-read Saint-Exupery's Wind, Sand, and Stars for the first time in many decades. Following a long career in what I've come to view as technical risk management (systems, network, data, and software administration and/or development), what struck me most wasn't the poetry and beauty of the book, but all the damned stupid risks the narrator took, all of which were warnings that an inevitable fatal accident would occur. And in fact did.