From Safety – I to Safety – II : Is there a case for the shipping industry

Abstract

 Safety is usually defined as ‘freedom from incidents and accidents’!

• Is it then a “dynamic non-event.”? noted more in its absence -  than its presence.”  
• If the measurement of safety is that nothing happens, then how do we understand how systems operate -  to produce nothing?  
• In other words, since accidents are only probabilistic outcomes, it is a challenge to say for sure that - the absence of accidents is by good design - or by lucky chance!
• Yet another much misunderstood concept is the James Reason’s Swiss Cheese model that apparently seems to epitomise the luck by-chance concept of accepted holes in the series of barriers to a critical incident, happy with the situation that some barriers may fail, but some may still work!

This article, challenges some traditional fundamental concepts of accident dynamics, accident prevention, and accident analysis prevalent in the shipping industry.        

 The purpose is to emphasize that people dealing with safety must understand the underpinning theory of safety management and accident analysis,                                                                                          and the practical application of Integrated Safety Management framework – by integration, we mean integrated with technology and how safety is considered in such a context.