Knowledge management for industrial safety, generic resource platform combined with an ontology based approach

International audienceThe capacity to manage risks and maintain industrial safety is largely based on the capacity of various actors to acquire, maintain and share knowledge on a large variety of subjects. The actors are, of course, the plant operator but also the employees, the competent authorities, the external maintenance teams or internal or external experts in charge of risk assessment and design of risk management. The knowledge ranges from the regulatory framework to the details of a machine or a process but also includes the general knowledge about industrial safety, the hazardous phenomena, the properties of the substances. Part of this knowledge is also largely tacit. It lies in the brain of the scientific experts or the employees who are able to make the connection between apparently disconnected pieces of knowledge. Detecting, extracting, maintaining and communicating this knowledge are typical knowledge management activities. This is the reason why INERIS has initiated a research program dedicated to knowledge management with several initial outcomes that will be presented in this paper together with the general objectives of the program and the perspectives for the coming years. The first part of the paper is dedicated to a recall of the knowledge management principles based mainly on the typology of knowledge introduced by Nonaka. It is put in relation with the typology of knowledge used in safety management activities. Two examples of knowledge management systems are presented and related to the typology of knowledge previously described. In both cases, the added value resides in the capacity to establish relations between different knowledge elements. This is partly realised by documents indexing and the use of efficient information retrieval tools. The development of an ontology of industrial safety contributes to achieving these goals. It constitutes a reference for indexing and will offer a structure for future developments of semantic web-based tools. Such an ontology is presently under development. Its use to improve the indexing and information retrieval in the knowledge management systems is illustrated

Une analyse des grandes visions prospectives internationales sur le devenir de l’environnement : l’étude ScénEnvi

International audienceTo contribute to French scientific planning in the environmental sciences, a study of major scenarios from around the world on the possible futures for the environment was made under the auspices of Alliance AllEnvi. For the more than 300 scenarios analyzed, governance and the economy turned out to be the major factors for differentiating them. Eleven families of scenarios were placed in three groups : decline, no priority for the environment, and priority for the environment. The first two groups correspond to a severely deteriorated environment, but the third has a more encouraging outcome despite the inefficiency of certain orientations. A detailed analysis of the methodology and findings is proposed while focusing on the factors “environment” and “sciences and technology”, which are decisive for AllEnvi.Pour contribuer à la programmation scientifique française dans le domaine des sciences de l’environnement, une étude des grandes visions de prospective à travers le monde sur les devenirs possibles de l’environnement a été entreprise dans le cadre de l’Alliance AllEnvi. Plus de 300 scénarios ont été analysés, révélant la prédominance de la gouvernance et de l’économie comme facteurs différenciant ces scénarios. La démarche a défini 11 familles de scénarios regroupant les différentes tendances qui se structurent en 3 groupes : le déclin, l’absence de priorité environnementale et la priorité accordée à l’environnement. Si les deux premiers groupes correspondent à des dégradations plus ou moins sévères de l’environnement, le troisième conduit à des résultats plutôt encourageants, même si certaines orientations s’avèrent in fine peu efficaces. Une analyse détaillée de la démarche déployée et des résultats obtenus est proposée ici en apportant une attention particulière aux facteurs « Environnement » et « Sciences et Technologie », qui sont structurants pour les missions d’AllEnvi