The Safety Information System

Setting up a long-term information system can be costly and time consuming, but the savings in terms of losses prevented will more than make up for the effort. As 

Setting up a safety information system for a single project or product may be easier. The effort starts in the development process and then is passed on for use in operations. The information accumulated during the safety-driven design process provides the baseline for operations, as described in chapter 12. For example, the identification of critical items in the hazard analysis can be used as input to the maintenance process for prioritization. Another example is the use of the assumptions underlying the hazard analysis to guide the audit and performance assessment process. But first the information needs to be recorded and easily located and used by operations personnel. 

All of the information in the safety information system will probably not be in one document, but there should be a central location containing pointers to where all the information can be found. Chapter 12 contains a list of what should be in an operations safety management plan. The overall safety management plan will contain similar information with some additions for development. 

When safety information is being shared among companies or with regulatory agencies, there needs to be protection from disclosure and use of proprietary data for purposes other than safety improvement. 

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This chapter describes the implications of STAMP on operations. Some topics that are relevant here are left to the next chapter on management organizational design, safety culture and leadership, assignment of appropriate responsibilities throughout the safety control structure, the safety information system, and corporate safety policies. These topics span both development and operations and many of the same principles apply to each, so they have been put into a separate chapter. A final section of this chapter considers the application of STAMP and systems thinking principles to occupational safety. 

The conclusions for company B are similar to company A in that safety was ignored from several individual or local standpoints, mainly by product quality and cost constraints, lack of historical information about deviations and lack of experienced people. This contributes to the main weakness of the safety management system, which are a lack of overview of deviations, their underlying latent conditions and of their influences on the safety barriers in the operational process. 

The Hazardous Materials Transportation Act, passed in 1975, is the primary law governing transportation of chemicals and hazardous materials. The act includes a comprehensive assessment of the regulations, information systems, container safety, and training for emergency response and enforcement. The regulations apply to any person who transports, or causes to be transported or shipped, a hazardous material or who manufactures, fabricates, marks, maintains, reconditions, repairs, or tests a package or container which is represented, marked, certified, or sold by such person for use in the transportation in commerce of certain hazardous materials. ... 

Finally, major FIPV chemical-related activities in Europe to utilize, or to monitor and learn from, include the development of the European Information System on Risks from chemicals released from consumer products/articles (EIS-ChemRisks). EIS-ChemRisks has been designed to be a European-wide expert and stakeholders network of networks to systematically exchange and assess information on risks from chemicals released from consumer products/articles. The overall objective is to develop tools and reference data to enable harmonized exposure assessment procedures in the European Union. These tools and reference data will support the development of a structured stakeholder dialog in the framework of the General Product Safety Directive (GPSD, 2001/ 95/EC) and progressively in the framework of the European Commission s REACH program as it is established and implemented. 

Once again, these types of flaws do not simply apply to operations or to the technical system but also to system design and development. For example, a common flaw in system development is that the safety information gathered or created by the system safety engineers (the hazards and the necessary design constraints to control them) is inadequately communicated to the system designers and testers, or that flaws exist in the use of this information in the system development process. 

Besides setting the culture through their own behavior, managers need to establish the organizational safety policy and create a safety control structure with appropriate responsibilities, accountability and authority, safety controls, and feedback channels. Management must also establish a safety management plan and ensure that a safety information system and continual learning and improvement processes are in place and effective. 

This chapter starts with a discussion of the role of specifications and how systems theory can be used as the foundation for the specification of complex systems. Then an example of how to put the components together in system design and development is presented. Chapters 11 and 12 cover how to maximize learning from accidents and incidents and how to enforce safety constraints during operations. The design of safety information systems is discussed in chapter 13. 

Each intent level contains information about the characteristics of the environment, human operators or users, the physical and functional system components, and requirements for and results of verification and validation activities for that level. The safety information is embedded in each level, instead of being maintained in a separate safety log, but linked together so that it can easily be located and reviewed. 

Create and update the organizational safety information system. 

The extent of use of the technical information system is a reflection of the effectiveness of the safety, health, and environmental affairs staff... 

Safety involves all people, and safety activities that facilitate the implementation of the safety management system should involve everyone. Employees should be informed of the facts at all times and should be asked to give input and suggestions on aspects of safety that directly or indirectly concern them. 

Safety reporting systems in healthcare have drawn their inspiration from similar systems in other industries, particularly aviation and the nuclear industry. Reporting systems in aviation are now well developed and provide important safety related feedback, although this has not always been the case. Captain Mike Holton describes the situation which led to the establishment of the British Airways safety information system (BASIS), a state of affairs which may be strangely familiar to many clinicians and managers in healthcare ... 

Fred, W., (2001). A road safety information system from concept to implementation. Leidschendam, SWOV Institute for Road Safety Research, The Netherlands, pp. 7-9. 

Anyone who plans to handle an adhesive must be familiar with the measures required to prevent or minimize exposure of personnel. In addition to volatile organic solvents and resins, adhesives may contain pigments, catalysts, stabilizer, extenders, etc. Each of these components may possess hazardous properties individually or in combination with other materials. There are thousands of adhesive compounds on the market making it impractical to list the hazards of every one of them. The current system of communication required by law is described below to allow the reader to decipher the safety information provided by adhesive manufacturers. This system is applicable to all chemicals. 

The institution has in place rapid, useful, and intelligible feedback channels to communicate the lessons learned from both the reactive and proactive safety information systems. Throughout the institution the emphasis is on generalizing these lessons to the system at large rather than merely localizing failures and weaknesses. 

The analysis will also look for opportunities for hazard mitigation through identification of human error potential and improved information presentation by comparing the TA with HMI design guidelines from appropriate sectors. In summary, the CTA will enable the safety-related system developer to ... 

To be effective, the review process should ensure that the necessary information is available for top management to evaluate the continuing suitability, adequacy, and effectiveness of the [safety management system],. .. Reviews should present results (for example, a scorecard) to focus top management on the [safety management system] elements most in need [of] their attention.. .. 

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