Risk, Oil Spills, and Governance: Can Organizational Theory Help Us Understand the 2010 Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill?

The 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico awakened communities to the increased risk of large-scale damage along their coastlines presented by new technology in deep water drilling. Normal accident theory and high reliability theory offer a framework through which to view the 2010 spill that features predictive criteria linked to a qualitative assessment of risk presented by technology and organizations. The 2010 spill took place in a sociotechnical system that can be described as complex and tightly coupled, and therefore prone to normal accidents. However, the entities in charge of managing this technology lacked the organizational capacity to safely operate within this sociotechnical system

The technology-culture interface and its impact on aviation safety: a North African perspective.

The aviation industry in the North Africa Region (NAR) is still suffering from a high rate of fatal accidents in comparison to other regions. In 2016, about 128 passengers were killed in the Middle East and NAR, whereas in Europe just two passengers killed despite both regions using a similar aircrafts. Aviation companies within the NAR thus require safety performance improvement. The current research indicates that pilot decision-making performance in the cockpit is responsible for about 60% of aviation fatal accident in the global aviation industry. In addition, the current literature shows that pilots’ risk perception is directly influenced by the culture interface, which plays crucial role in shaping their decision-making performance. Accordingly, this study investigated the national culture impact on pilot decision-making performance in the cockpit within the NAR. A number of professional pilots from the NAR were surveyed and interviewed to explore this phenomenon. A mixed method research approach was implemented in this study, where 143 professional pilots from different levels were surveyed and 12 semi-structured interviews were conducted, to discover the extent to which these pilots are effect by the technology–culture interface within the NAR. The research investigated this phenomenon mainly based on four themes: cultural attributes, attitude to human and organisational factors, automation and risk perception; these are shown by the literature to be the most significant factors affecting the pilot risk perception in the cockpit. Ten factors were investigated, in addition to assessing the collective pilot’s risk perception within the NAR. The result indicated that NAR pilots are negatively affected by power distance, teamwork and automation as direct implications of the technology–culture interface. In addition, these pilots are suffering from high tolerance and acceptance of risk as an indirect impact of the regional national culture. Therefore, as the aim of this research is to enhance the pilot’s decision-making performance in the cockpit, a guideline for cultural calibration of the Crew Resource Management (CRM) training programme was proposed. This cultural calibration relies on development of the CRM curriculum by enhancing the pilot non-technical skills to overcome the effects of the technology–culture interface in the region. It also aims to improve their risk perception through introducing training in domain-specific risky events in the cockpit, which should enhance their ability to identify the cues that exist in risky situations. Furthermore, the limited research of aviation authorities and aviation safety departments’ roles regarding monitoring and enforcing the safety regulations and implementing proactive safety programmes in the aviation companies within the NAR negatively affect the progress of improving the safety performance.PhD in Transport System

Civil and Military Airworthiness

Effective safety management has always been a key objective for the broader airworthiness sector. This book is focused on safety themes with implications on airworthiness management. It offers a diverse set of analyses on aircraft maintenance accidents, empirical and systematic investigations on important continuing airworthiness matters and research studies on methodologies for the risk and safety assessment in continuing and initial airworthiness. Overall, this collection of research and review papers is a valuable addition to the published literature, useful for the community of aviation professionals and researchers

A reliability approach to the quantification of occupational accidents in the offshore oil and gas industry

Occupational accidents continue to occur at a frequency unacceptable to the offshore oil and gas industry. Current information and approaches related to the topic have been studied. Using reliability techniques, a holistic quantitative model has been developed and validated which can predict accident frequency. Model inputs include factors directly affecting accident frequency as well as corporate and external elements. Literature related to occupational accidents has been reviewed, concentrating on (i) modelling approaches taken by researchers over the past half century, (ii) statistical information currently available and (in influencing factors suggested by researchers for inclusion in accident models. A gap in the knowledge was confirmed, specifically the absence of a holistic, quantitative approach to oil and gas occupational accidents. An analysis of current global offshore oil and gas occupational accident statistics was performed, which revealed significant inter-regional and inter-company differences in accident frequency. This result helped to confirm that the group of factors affecting occupational accidents extended beyond the traditionally included direct and corporate elements to include external societal factors. Based partially on the literature review and database analysis, a model was developed which can predict occupational accident frequency in the offshore oil and gas industry. The model's holistic approach combines accident theories often preferred by representatives from the management, safety, engineering, and psychology disciplines. The approach is based on a chain of influence originating with external factors, which act through corporate elements to affect factors directly influencing the accident process. Expert opinion was used extensively to quantify (i) the relative strengths of the model elements directly affecting accident frequency and (ii) the relationships between the external, corporate, and direct layers. Using further expert opinion to provide input values, the model was validated by comparing its predictions with known results on Canadian production installations and in the Gulf ofMexico drilling sector

Error Detection and Recovery in Software Development

Software rarely works as intended when it is first written. Software engineering research has long been concerned with assessing why software fails and who is to blame, or why a piece of software is flawed and how to prevent such faults in the future. Errors are examined in the context of bugs, elements of source code that produce undesirable, unexpected and unintended deviations in behaviour. Though error is a prevalent, mature topic within software engineering, error detection and recovery are less well understood. This research uses rich qualitative methods to study error detection and recovery in professional software development practice. It has considered conceptual representations of error in software engineering research and trade literature. Using ethnographic principles, it has gathered accounts given by professional developers in interviews and in video-recorded paired interaction. Developers performing a range of tasks were observed, and findings were compared to theories of human error formed in psychology and safety science. Three empirical studies investigated error from the perspective of developers, recon- structing the view they hold when errors arise, to build a catalogue of active encounters with error in conceptual design, at the desk and after the fact. Analyses were structured to consider development holistically over time, rather than in terms of discrete tasks. By placing emphasis on “local rationality”, analytical focus was redirected from outcomes toward factors that influence performance. The resultant observations are assembled in an account of error handling in software development as personal and situated (in time and the developer’s environment), with implications for the changing nature of expertise

Safety and Reliability - Safe Societies in a Changing World

The contributions cover a wide range of methodologies and application areas for safety and reliability that contribute to safe societies in a changing world. These methodologies and applications include: - foundations of risk and reliability assessment and management - mathematical methods in reliability and safety - risk assessment - risk management - system reliability - uncertainty analysis - digitalization and big data - prognostics and system health management - occupational safety - accident and incident modeling - maintenance modeling and applications - simulation for safety and reliability analysis - dynamic risk and barrier management - organizational factors and safety culture - human factors and human reliability - resilience engineering - structural reliability - natural hazards - security - economic analysis in risk managemen

MEASURING INFRASTRUCTURE PROJECTS SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS IMPACT (MISI)

The research captured in this thesis has led to the development of a range of models, tools and processes for government and industry that provide a forwardlooking approach to the measurement of impact on infrastructure projects. This approach enables measurement of United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDG) at the project level to ensure investments are made equitably across economic, environment and social objectives. Application of the results from this research are already being actively used by the Environment Agency to manage impact assessment across its £5.2Bn portfolio of projects and by the Thames Tideway Project (£4.9Bn). Background. Achievement of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by the year 2030 is of paramount importance and the construction industry has a major role in achieving a measurable impact against the SDG targets. However, linking of ‘local’ infrastructure project success to ‘global’ SDG targets is problematic because the targets were designed at the national level and not at the project or programme level (Mansell, et al., 2020a). Furthermore, while the so called ‘triple bottom line’ (i.e. economy, environment and society) approach to understanding sustainability remains important, there is a need to understand how this can be related to the full project lifecycle as well as a need for improved project governance. This is consistent with the findings of a key UN investigation’s Fourth Report (Global Task Force, 2020) which calls for localization of SDGs as well as the need for cooperative governance to establish shared priorities. Research description. The research was based on two main stages. The first stage, informed by a systematic literature review, comprised a mixed method that involved a survey of 325 engineers to derive quantitative data (Mansell et al., 2020b) along with interviews with 40 CEOs and corporate Heads of Sustainability to capture qualitative data (Mansell et al., 2020c). The second stage involved the development of a prototype that was tested through two further exploratory investigations at two levels: (1) Test 1: is there a Golden Thread from global SDGs, through the organisational level, down to project level SDG impact measurement?; (2) Test 2: does the prototype model, the Impact Value Chain, have practical coherence when PhD: Measuring Infrastructure Projects’ SDG Impact (MISI) v assessed in a brief case study of a Water Utility Company (Anglian Water) (Mansell et al., 2020d). Subsequently, and not part of this thesis, the research led to a collaborative partnership to test the prototype model and its approach across the Environment Agency’s full portfolio of projects and also, the megaproject of the Thames Tideway Tunnel. Findings. The survey of 325 engineers (Mansell et al., 2020b) indicated four primary shortfalls for measuring SDGs on infrastructure projects, namely leadership, tools and methods, engineers’ business skills in measuring SDG impact, and how project success is too narrowly defined as outputs (such as time, cost and scope) and not outcomes (longer-term local impacts and stakeholder value). Moreover, the interviews with 40 senior executives (Mansell et al., 2020c) from the UK identified that SDG measurement practices are currently ‘more talk less walk’ and indicated a number of contextual and mechanistic opportunities to increase the outcome success. Therefore, using empirical evidence the researcher identified a ‘golden thread’ between best practice sustainability-reporting frameworks at the ‘local’ project level and those at the organisational and supra-national-levels (Mansell et al., 2020a). In doing so, the research identified that there is sufficient linkage to embed SDG impact targets into the design stage of an infrastructure project. Furthermore, the innovative process model, called the ‘Infrastructure SDG Impact-Value Chain’ (IVC) to link project delivery with strategic SDG impacts, builds on the concept of creating shared value and creates a practical mechanism to turn theory into meaningful impact in project selection and delivery. The utility of the IVC process model was initially investigated as part of the case study investigation of Anglian Water (Mansell et al., 2020d) and its application has been further demonstrated in the MISI Project (not included in this thesis). Research Impact. The research produced twelve peer-reviewed papers including being published in seven internationally recognised academic journals, such as: Sustainability (2 articles), Administrative Sciences, and the Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers–Engineering Sustainability. The MISI research outputs have been taken forward by the government and industry partners, specifically the Environment Agency and Thames Tideway Project, working together to establish this new approach for measuring sustainability on infrastructure projects

Mitigating Information security risks during the Transition to Integrated Operations: Models & Data

This research studies the change of information security risks during the transition toIntegrated Operations (an operation extensively utilize advanced information communicationtechnology to connect offshore facilities and onshore control centers and even vendors.) inNorsk Hydro, a Norwegian oil and gas company. The specific case for this study is a pilotplatform in transition to Integrated Operations, Brage: twenty traditional work processes areto be replaced by new work processes. The operators on the Brage platform have to build uprelevant new knowledge to work effectively with new work processes. The new workprocesses, new knowledge and their interrelationship all affect information security risks.The management of Norsk Hydro is concerned with the problem of the increasinginformation security risks, which might cause incidents with severe consequences. We lookfor policies that support a successful (smooth and fast) operation transition.System dynamics is adopted in this research to model the causal structure (mechanism) ofthe operation transition. We chose system dynamics because operation transition is a processrich in feedback, delays, nonlinearity and tradeoffs. All these features are captured by systemdynamics models. Moreover, system dynamics models can be used to simulate variousscenarios. The analyses of these scenarios can lead to insights on policy rules. Wespecifically investigate policies concerning transition speed, resource allocation during thetransition to Integrated Operations and investment rules in incident response capability.Since historical time series data about incidents and information security risks are scarce, weuse following model-based interventions to elicit structural information from our client andexperts:May 2005 First group model-building workshop Problem articulationSep 2005 Second group model-building workshop Model conceptualizationDec 2005 Model-based interview Model formulationYear 2006 Series of model-based meetings Model refinementNov 2008 Model-based interview Model validationThe Brage model was developed and validated through these model-based interventions. Theanalyses of various simulation results lead to the following policy insights: 1. Transition speed. The operation transition should be designed with a speed that allowsthe operators not only to get familiar with new work processes, but also to build up thedetailed knowledge supporting these work processes. The relevance of such knowledge,which is mostly tacit, is sometimes underrated. If the operators only know what to do,but not how to do it effectively, the benefit of the new technology (embedded in the newwork processes) will not be fully realized, and the platform will be more vulnerable toinformation security threats.2. Resource allocation. Resources (operators’ time) are needed to learn new work processesand to acquire related knowledge. Generally, the operators will first put their time intoachieving the production target. Investment on learning activities will not be prioritizedif these activities hinder reaching the production target, even if the operators know thisshort-term performance drop is the cost for obtaining long-term higher performance.Nevertheless strategic decision should never be influenced by operative goals and highlevel managements should be responsible to make decisions on whether focusing onlong-term profits and accept short-term performance drop as a trade-off.3. Investment in incident response capability. The management in Norsk Hydro is aware ofthe increasing information security risks changing from unconnected platforms tointegrated ones. However, investment in incident response capability to handleincreasing incidents is not made proactively. Only if the frequency of incidents hasincreased or severe incidents has occurred or the incident cost have been proved high,will the management decide to invest more on incident response capability. The Bragemodel simulations illustrate that these reactive decision rules will trap the managementinto ignoring the early signs of increasing information security risks, and causeunderinvestment, which results in inadequate incident response capability, andsubsequently leads to severe consequence. Proactive decision rules work effectively inreducing severity of incidents.This work helps our client in two ways. First, the model-based communication helps themanagement in Norsk Hydro clarify the problem it is facing and understand the underlyingmechanism causing the problem. There is an increased insight into the relevance of newknowledge acquisition. Second, the Brage model offers the management a tool to investigatethe long-term operation results under different policies, thus, helping improve themanagement decision process. This work contributes to the information security literature in three ways. First, previousresearch in information security is mostly on risk assessment methodology and informationsecurity management checklist. The dynamics of information security risks during theoperation transition period has not been well studied before. In this fast changing society,this aspect of changing information security risks is of importance. Second, we introduce adynamic view with the long-term perspective of information security. Although incidentshappen in random manner, the underlying mechanism that leads to such incidents oftenexists for a period. Understanding such mechanism is the key to prevent incidents. Last, butnot least, we demonstrate how formal modeling and simulation can facilitate the building oftheories on information security management. Information security management involvesnot only “hard” aspects, such as work processes and technology, but also “soft” aspects, suchas people’s awareness, people’s perception, and the cultural environment, - and all of whichchange over time. These soft aspects are sometimes the major factors affecting informationsecurity.This work also contributes to the system dynamics literature by adding examples of howmodel-based interventions are used to identify problems, conceptualize and validate models.The activities of group model-building workshops and model validation interviews arecarefully documented and reflected. It is an important step towards the accumulation ofknowledge in model-based intervention

Measuring safety climate as an indicator of effective safety and health programs in the construction industry

The purpose of this study was to measure the safety climate, safe behaviors, and EMR, of construction companies in southeastern Louisiana, and to measure selected demographic variables of construction workers employed at these companies. Two hundred and eight workers from twenty nine construction companies agreed to participate in the study. The Safety Climate Survey (SCS) was utilized to measure the safety climate level and safe behaviors of participants and collect selected demographic variables. Additionally, companies were asked to provide their Experience Modification Rates and North American Industry Classification System codes. A six-item Likert-type scale was utilized to measure safety climate perceptions and safe behavior experiences. Responses suggest that participants’ overall perceptions of their companies’ safety climates were good and that this did correlate to safe behavior at their respective companies. A small negative correlation was detected between education levels and Experience Modification Rates. A multiple regression analysis revealed that the variables safe behavior and safety coordinator explained 36.2% of the variance in safe behavior. A second multiple regression analysis revealed that the variable of education level explained 4.4% of the variance in Experience Modification Rates