Jaime Santos-Reyes

Assessing safety management systems

Abstract Traditionally, both academe and practitioners have tended to address fire safety by focusing on technical aspects and looking for the immediate causes of fire incidents or accidents after they have taken place. More recently, organisations have focused on assessing the consequences of the fire risk inherent in their operations pro-actively. However, fire safety still tends to be addressed in isolation, though fire loss is an emergent property. An organisations emergent property results from the interrelated activities of people who design it, manage it and operate it. There is still a need for a systemic approach to understand the systemic nature of fire safety. This paper describes a fire safety management system (FSMS) model that aims to maintain fire risk within an acceptable range in an organisations operations in a coherent way. This systemic approach can be used as a diagnostic tool to assess the effectiveness of existing safety management systems (SMS). It is hoped that this approach will lead not only to more effective management of fire safety, but also to more effective management of safety, health and the environment for any organisation.

A systemic approach to fire safety management

Abstract A systemic approach has been adopted to construct a fire-safety management system (FSMS). It has been applied to the case of an oil and gas organisation, although the approach is general. Significant changes have taken place in fire safety management in the oil and gas industry over the last few years. However, fire safety still tends to be analysed in isolation, though fire loss is a result of the interaction of the parts that constitute an oil and gas organisation as a whole. Fire loss may be seen as a `systemic’ failure, not a result of a single cause. This paper proposes a FSMS for an oil and gas organisation. The approach aims to help to maintain fire risk within an acceptable range in an oil and gas organisations operations in a coherent way. It is hoped that this approach will lead not only to more effective management of fire safety in an oil and gas organisation, but also to more effective management of safety, health and the environment for any organisation.

A Systemic Analysis of the Paddington Railway Accident

Abstract The Paddington railway collision may be regarded as the most serious railway accident on Britains railway system. The accident occurred on 5 October 1999. Thirty-one people were killed and many more were injured. An immediate and ‘direct’ cause of the collision was the fact that a train that belonged to Thames Trains had passed a signal at red and collided with a First Great Western High Speed Train at Ladbroke Grove Junction, near Paddington, London. Following this and several other accidents that have occurred since privatization of the railways (1994), there has been a large amount of public debate about safety management on the British railways. This article presents the results of a preliminary systemic analysis of the accident. The approach has been to compare the features of the Paddington railway accident with the characteristics of a railway systemic safety management system model, which has been constructed employing the concepts of systems. A number of discrepancies have come to light. Further analysis would be expected to reveal more. It is hoped that this systemic analysis will help to identify ‘learning points’, which are relevant for preventing accidents on the railways.

A Safety Management System Model with Application to Fire Safety Offshore

A systemic approach has been adopted to construct a model for a safety management system (SMS). It has been applied to the case of fire safety for an oil and gas organization as an illustration, although the approach is general. The essential purpose has been not merely to identify functions but to create a “structure” for a SMS, within which necessary “process” or action takes place. Fire loss may be seen as a “systemic” failure, not a result of a single “cause”. The approach aims to help to maintain fire risk within an acceptable range in an oil and gas organizations operations in a coherent way. The concept of “viability” of a safety management system is introduced and given a probabilistic interpretation. It is hoped that this approach will lead not only to more effective management of fire safety in an oil and gas organization, but also to more effective management of safety, health and the environment for any organization.

Applying the SDMS Model to the Analysis of the Tabasco Flood Disaster in Mexico

ABSTRACT The Tabasco flood disaster occurred in November 2007 and it has been regarded as one of the worst natural disasters that have struck the State of Tabasco, Mexico, in more than 50 years. It is believed that 80% of the State was flooded and more than one million people were left homeless. This article addresses the issue of learning from past flood disasters. The developed Systemic Disaster Management System (SDMS) model was used to analyze the flood disaster. A number of systemic failures were highlighted by the model. It is hoped that by conducting such an analysis, lessons can be learned so that the impact of natural disasters such as the case of Tabascos flooding can be prevented or mitigated in the future.

Modeling Critical Infrastructure Interdependency: The Case of the Mexico City Metro Transport System

ABSTRACT “Critical infrastructures” are exceedingly complex and highly interconnected. In order to gain a full understanding and comprehensive awareness of the risks associated with critical infrastructures it becomes essential to consider in a coherent way all the aspects that may cause a failure of such systems. That is, there is a need for a systemic approach to interdependencies among critical infrastructures. The article presents the application of a systemic safety management system (SSMS) model to interdependency modeling for the case of the Mexico City Metro transport network. The model has highlighted that interdependencies occur vertically and horizontally. Horizontal interdependency occurs at every level of recursion and can be: operational, managerial, and environmental. Vertical interdependency, on the other hand, occurs between two levels of recursion only. The SSMS model has shown the potential to be used to model interdependencies among critical infrastructures. It is hoped that the approach presented may help to gain a better understanding of critical infrastructure interdependency.

A systemic approach to safety management on the british railway system

Recent and highly publicised accidents in the transport industry have highlighted the need for operators of public transport to address safety hazards. Safety still tends to be addressed in isolation, though any accident is an emergent property of a system. There is a need for a systemic approach to understand the systemic nature of risk. This paper presents a preliminary Railway Safety Management System (RSMS) model that aims to help to maintain risk within an acceptable range in railway industry operations in a coherent way. It is hoped that this approach will lead to more effective management of safety in the British railway industry.

A Systemic Approach to Measuring Fire Safety Performance

Traditionally, fire safety approaches have been reactive rather than proactive. They have tended to focus on technical aspects and look for the immediate causes of incidents or accidents after they have taken place. Negative outcomes have been seen as means to measure the organisation’s fire safety performance. More recently, fire safety approaches have focused on assessing the consequences of the fire risk inherent in the organisation’s operations more proactively. They may however not address human factors. There is a need to understand the systemic nature of fire safety, so that both technical and human factors can be addressed as a coherent whole. Moreover, this understanding should help to quantify the organisation’s fire safety performance. This paper presents a systemic approach that may be used to measure an organisation’s fire safety performance. This system is intended to facilitate an understanding of the systemic nature of fire safety and to help organisations to maintain fire risk within an acceptable range.

Creating a fire safety management system for offshore facilities

Fire safety management on offshore platforms has been a matter of major concern since the publication of the Cullen report into the Piper Alpha fire. In order to be able to achieve and maintain an acceptable level of fire risk it is desirable to consider the system as a “dynamic whole”. The intention in this research has been to construct a fire safety management system which is both efficacious and resilient. To this end a systemic approach to fire safety for an offshore platform has been pursued, employing the Viable System Model and the Failure Paradigm Method.

BRT Accidents in intersections or crossroads: A Review of Empirical Research

This paper presents a comprehensive review of the state of the art that have been conducted on the accidents in Bus Rapid Transit Systems (BRT) in intersections or crossroads. The review comprises a number of articles consulted in the electronic databases SCOPUS and WEB OF SCIENCE from 2005 to the present year, since in that time period, the Metrobus transport system was installed in Mexico City. The result shows the need to carry out more prevention and sound approach studies of accidents in this type of system using statistical analysis and to be more explicit when presenting results, this paper presents the methodology that allows to obtain quantifiable data to measure the frequency with which the accidents happen, and some future research direction is given.