What do we really know about emerging risks ? A literature review and some comments

International audienceThe issue of emerging risks is today recognized as an important concern for risk governance. Several organisations have developed their own definitions of this concept and deduced from that a framework to deal with them. This paper aims to compare the various definitions associated today with this term and tries to infer a conceptualization of the concept of emergence in risk management

About the relevance of the concept of risk acceptability in the risk management process : a decisional approach in the French national context

International audienceA rapid view to the evolution of the legal context at the national European and international level shows a need to introduce both more "visibility" and more "legibility" on the way the decisions in risk analysis and risk management are taken. This can be introduced by: i) giving an image of what the scientific and the experts agree to be the technical "state of the Art" in there respective discipline to reduce and control hazardous activities; (ii) improving the way the population and the other stakeholders are involved and participate to the risk management process. In France, the Toulouse disaster has revealed a real need to improve the way decisions are taken in the risk prevention processes. In this paper, we will show how the establish concept of "risks acceptability" can induce bias on the way risk analysis are performed in the context of the hazard induced by industrial activities. We will show that there is a need to distinguish the acceptability known as "technical" from the one known as "social". We will then propose a new enlightenment on the way risk analysis are performed in Safety Studies and then discuss about the issue of land-use planning in France using "Risk prevention plans" (TRPP) around SEVESO sites

Participative design of participation structures: a general approach and some risk management case studies

Organising participation of multiple stakeholders is nowadays a widespread request in decision processes, especially for organisations managing environmental risks. Therefore, analysts delivering decision support are expected to provide decision makers with scientifically sound andpractically realisable approaches regarding this issue. One of the main challenges in dealing with participation is the definition of the organisation, the so called participative structure, through which stakeholders will contribute and interact during the decision process. Who should participate when and according to which rules are the main questions to be answered. Stakes associated to this challenge are of extreme importance for decision makers since decision legitimacy and acceptance strongly relies on the ability to demonstrate a real transparency and information disclosure during the whole decision process.This paper proposes the iterative comparison approach as a new and original frame to be used by an analyst supporting a client dealing with such questions. Through an unambiguous definition of cognitive artefacts to be constructed when designing participative structures, this paper providesa clear framework that organises an analyst intervention in participative contexts. Furthermore, it offers the opportunity to design tailored participative structures that integrate context specificities in one hand, and satisfies quality criteria being fairness, competence and efficiency on the other hand

IRGC Guidelines for Emerging Risk Governance: Guidance for the Governance of Unfamiliar Risks

The IRGC Guidelines for Emerging Risk Governance describe key steps and associated methodologies for early identification and management of emerging risks. The process proposed in this report covers an overarching, flexible and adaptable set of guidelines designed to deal with complex, evolving and uncertain environments

Transport infrastructures safety: a case study about public policy-making

People see and evaluate risks in a very different way, this is probably the most changeable variable that we must take into account developing some public policy on risk. People's judgements depend on both their personal experiences and from the context in which they are, thus, these conditions make impossible to evaluate them a priori. In this paper we present a French real case on transport infrastructure and risk management, namely the safety of their users. The aim of this paper is to provide, on the one side, an example of public policy management in which people safety and economic constraints are involved. And on the other side, open a discussion about risk reduction and the policies achieving it

Protéger les infrastructures de transport contre les accidents majeurs

Users of transport infrastructures nearby hazardous plants may represent important populations potentially impacted by a major accident. The Toulouse catastrophe in 2011 has been an illustrative example as it strongly impacted highway users. Therefore, transport infrastructure users (road and railway users mainly) represent a population to be protected within a land use planning policy as it is the case for inhabitants. Accordingly, this paper presents a decision support approach aiming to help local stakeholders identify the most cost effective measures to protect transport infrastructures from major accidental consequences. The suggested approach takes into account both technical and participatory constraints with the aim of offering an equal chance to all involved stakeholders to understand the issues under discussion and formulate opinions and values.Les Plans de prévention des risques technologiques (PPRT) ont depuis leur instauration en 2003 profondément modifié le paysage de la gestion des risques industriels majeurs en France. Si les impacts sur les riverains industriels et résidentiels ont été largement discutés et médiatisés, le cas des infrastructures de transport l’a été moins et pourtant les enjeux sont importants. Une voie ferrée ou une autoroute à forts trafics peuvent exposer plusieurs centaines d’usagers faiblement protégés ; le cas le plus critique étant l’occurrence de l’accident durant la période de saturation (embouteillages, arrêt du train etc). De plus, ces infrastructures peuvent s’avérer très coûteuses à protéger ou à dévier (de 25 000 à 300 000 euros par mètre linéaire selon les spécificités de construction). Enfin, selon leur importance et la complexité de leur gestion, chacune de ces infrastructures peut être au centre d’un large réseau d’acteurs économiques, sociaux et territoriaux. Pour apporter des réponses à la hauteur des défis techniques et sociétaux requis par la protection des usagers des infrastructures de transport dans le cadre des PPRT, l’INERIS a développé une démarche d’aide à la décision permettant d’évaluer différentes alternatives de protection disponibles. En plus d’un guide technique, cette approche suggère aussi un cadre participatif permettant aux différentes parties prenantes d’être associées à la prise de décision. Basée sur les apports des sciences de la décision d’une part, et des techniques de protection des infrastructures d’autre part, l’approche de l’INERIS se base sur quatre étapes

Pilotage dynamique de la sécurité par les indicateurs. Introduction au guide INERIS

Managing high risk systems is closely tied to the ability of continuously reviewing the potential gap between managers’ representations of their system’s strengths and weaknesses with its actual state. This gap can result from both natural systemic evolutions and the very consequences of previous decisions adopted and implemented. The deployment of performance assessment and reviewing to overcome, or at least reduce, this gap becomes therefore a key step of every safety management policy. This paper introduces and discusses the reflections conducted at INERIS with regard to the use of indicators for process safety performance assessment. It firstly uncovers the set of key hypotheses funding our work, especially when these orientations conflicts with previous reflections one may retrieve in scientific literature and operational practices. The second section is more operational and details how these funding orientations are translated in an operational and reproducible methodology for process safety indicators identification and deployment within organizationsLe pilotage des systèmes à risques implique la nécessaire et continue confrontation des représentations des gestionnaires avec les réalités du terrain, qu’elles soient issues des évolutions naturelles de ce dernier ou des conséquences de leurs propres décisions. Par conséquent, l’évaluation des performances sécurité est une phase clé de la boucle de régulation constituante de chaque démarche de gestion de la sécurité. Le présent article introduit et discute les travaux menés à l’INERIS sur le développement et l’utilisation des indicateurs à des fins de pilotage de la sécurité des procédés. Il s’appuie en premier lieu sur l’explicitation des principales hypothèses qui ont fondé notre travail avant de détailler la démarche d’aide à l’identification/conception d’indicateurs de sécurité adaptés aux spécificités de chaque organisatio

Safety measurement problem revisited: key challenges in developing safety performance indicators

Safety performance indicators have for long been recognised as inescapable tools of process safety performances evaluation. The richness and variety of both academic and professional literature (OECD, 2008), (CCPS, 2010), (Cefic, 2011) demonstrate this fact. Still, this long history leaves a large set of challenges unanswered when it comes to how indicators should be designed and used for process safety performance assessment. Actually, a large part of the debate is currently occupied by two major issues being firstly the distinction between leading and lagging indicators and secondly the distinction between process and occupational safety indicators. Without denying the relevance of these two topics, this work investigates two other challenges that we believe highly relevant given the issue of safety performance assessment. The first issue relates to the often neglected and dismissed role of indicators as promoters and vehicles of safety values within the organisation. Actually, we claim that indicators are not only meant for bottom up collection of information on how objectives are achieved, they are also a top down information the workforce interprets in order to build its perceptions of what the management thinks is important when it comes to safety. Better understanding this mechanism is a key step in the path of ensuring acceptance of safety indicators and commitment in providing data that are required for their use. The second issue focuses on the need to ensure that safety performance indicators are put at the service of the organisation’s safety model. If the safety models defines what the organisations believes as means for controlling risks and achieving safety performance, it is crucial that indicators serve the wondering of whether this model is relevant for the organisation and put in practice by the various levels of management and workforce. This work aspires to raise awarness within the scientific and professional community on these issues to hopefully improve the relevance and added value of safety performance evaluation systems