By Dong-Han Ham, Chonnam National University, South Korea | donghan.ham@gmail.com
Two new safety issues-Safety-II and resilience engineering (RE) have been attracting much attention in South Korea. Here, I would like to introduce the following briefly: (1) how Korean safety engineers and researchers currently look at the concepts of Safety-II and RE, (2) what activities have been done in relation to Safety-II and resilience engineering so far in South Korea, and (3) what plans are being made to advance the state of the art of Safety-II and RE in South Korea.
As is known, Safety-II has emerged as a new safety concept in response to the motivation of overcoming the limitations of traditional safety concept called Safety-I, which include overreliance on deterministic causal models and root causes, find-and-fix approach, bi-modality assumption of safety, and so on. Safety-I defines safety as a condition where failures are minimal or absent. However, Safety-II defines safety as a condition in which successful outcomes continue or a condition where such successful outcomes are maximized. Although both of them can result in the same result, which is the minimization of wrong outcomes, they have fundamentally different concepts and approaches to enhancing system safety. While Safety-I focuses on how to minimize failed situations, Safety-II aims to guarantee successful situations continuously on the basis of understanding how successful outcomes are obtained. For this, Safety-II emphasizes that safety professionals should monitor a working system and its surroundings vigilantly and proactively respond to various changes in the system and the environment, while always concerning about system safety. RE is a new practical discipline to ensure system resilience, which is the ability of a system that achieve its functional purposes, adapting to unexpected conditions as well as expected ones. RE aims to develop the principles and methods that are needed to enable a system to function resiliently. Associating RE with two different safety concepts, we can say that RE aims to proactively manage system safety through a synergistic integration of Safety-I and Safety-II.
Steven Shorrock wrote a short article titled ‘What Safety-II isn’t’. This article summarizes several myths or misconceptions that safety professionals can have. From my experience of working with Korean safety professionals, I can say that a lot of them had those myths and misconceptions as well when they first met Safety-II and RE. First of all, they had an idea that Safety-II aims to replace all the things of Safety-I. As you know, this is never the truth; Safety-II is a new concept that emerged to supplement the shortcomings of Safety-I. Thus both of them should be used appropriately depending on safety concerns and contexts. Most Korean safety professionals had had opinions that Safety-I has critical limitations and cannot be effectively applied to several work domains, and thus a new alternative should be developed. Accordingly, they might first think that Safety-II aims to discard all the things of Safety-I. The second common misunderstanding that they could not dismiss easily was that Safety-II looks only at successful outcomes. I think that they had a misunderstanding because Safety-II emphasizes the examination of successful outcomes. As Safety-I is not concerned with a large number of everyday successful outcomes, Safety-II claims that they should be understood thoroughly to understand how they can be obtained. Nonetheless, Safety-II does not focus only on successful outcomes; they are concerned with all of the possible outcomes. Another typical misconception among Korean safety professionals was that Safety-II is only useful in a complex socio-technical system such as air traffic control systems. Although Safety-II can have many advantages when they are applied to a complex system, its concepts and methods can be reasonably used for any type of work domain. However, many Korean safety professionals have had a more accurate understanding of Safety-II and Resilience through several conferences, workshops, and tutorials during the last decade. Currently, one of the most critical safety issues in South Korea is the adoption of ‘The Serious Accidents Punishment Act (the SAPA)’ law passed by the national assembly on January 8, 2021. After the introduction of this law, all of the companies in South Korea are concerned with how their safety management systems should be established and operated to satisfy the requirements stipulated in the law. Regarding this, a lot of Korean safety professionals currently agree that Safety-II and RE can be viable means to deal with this issue.
There were several academic societies related to safety, including The Korean Society of Safety, Korean Society of Disaster & Security, Korea Institute of Construction Safety, and so on. However, there was a strong need for establishing a new academic society in order to promote the academic research activities and practical applications of Safety-II and RE and to disseminate the usefulness of applying systems approaches to safety issues, including Safety-II and RE, in South Korea. On the other hand, a new academic society was also needed to offer a place where safety professionals working in different work domains, such as nuclear power plants, healthcare systems, manufacturing systems, and rail systems, can meet and discuss their domain-specific or domain-independent safety issues, based on system thinking and approaches. Under these academic and industrial needs, a new society ‘Korean Society of System Safety (http://systemsafetykorea.org)’ was established on June 2, 2019. This society aims to enhance the resilience level of all of the companies and organizations in South Korea by the effective use of system safety engineering concepts, models, and methods, including Safety-II and RE. So far, this society had led several RE research and consulting activities in South Korea. Some examples include: (1) establishing a systemic strategy to introduce innovative safety concepts and methods, (2) development of practical methods of using Functional Resonance Analysis Method for accident investigation and risk assessment, (3) development of processes and methods for assessing the resilience level of an organization based on Resilience Assessment Grid (RAG), (4) improving the system for evaluating safety activity level of public institutions in Korea, and (5) Assessment of resilience and safety culture of a power generation company and suggestion of practical ways of improving its resilience and safety culture. In addition, this society has held several tutorials and workshops to make Korean safety professionals acquainted with Safety-II, RE, FRAM, RAG, and so on. This society has much contributed to the community of Korean safety professionals so that they can have a right understanding of Safety-II and RE, and can think about several ways of applying them to their safety problems.
I expect that The Korean Society of System Safety will serve as a key hub for promoting academic research activities and industrial projects in the fields of Safety-II and RE in South Korea. I can list some plans to be implemented by this society. They include: (1) developing a FRAM model of two healthcare work systems, which are intensive care unit and emergency department, (2) applying FRAM to the identification and organization of decision requirements needed for coping with severe accident situations in nuclear power plants, (3) instructing industrial safety professionals in the third generation accident analysis methods such as FRAM and AcciMap, (4) Investigation of industrial accidents by using FRAM, AcciMap, and STAMP, and (5) developing industry-specific key assessment questions for the four abilities (monitoring, responding, learning, and anticipating) of a resilient system.
I hope that Korean safety professionals will establish an active collaboration network with anyone in the world who is interested in Safety-II and RE. I would also like to request REA members to have continuous interest in the academic and industrial activities to be conducted in South Korea.