Systemic research model applied to ISO Strategic Equity: the risks associated with minimising the operational context

Abstract

This article discusses the risks of conducting an investigation focused exclusively on human behavior, without considering the operational context, which will make it difficult to issue effective recommendations to prevent the recurrence of similar accidents.

Marine casualties and incidents can have causal factors and often the underlying safety issues are remote from the scene of the incident. A timely and methodical investigation that goes beyond the immediate evidence and focuses on looking for conditions that may cause similar occurrences in the future is necessary to properly determine such issues. Therefore, safety investigations of marine casualties and incidents should be understood as a means to determine not only what happened in the context of the accident, but also to uncover safety deficiencies in the overall management of operations, from formulation to implementation, as well as in terms of regulation, survey and inspection. For this reason, safety investigations must be sufficiently broad to cover these primary criteria.