Drift-to-danger Model
The drift-to-danger model is a dynamic model for understanding workplace safety.
Description
In brief:
- A system is established with goals and constraints, e.g. a factory has N staff and targets Y output and has various workplace safety policies.
- Individuals form strategies for how to meet goals and constraints balancing their effort.
- As circumstances change, so too do individuals' strategies; certain changes can cause strategies to drift towards danger, e.g neglect of safety policies.
- A well functioning system requires defenses in depth--systems as independent layers that will react to transgressions and provide a negative feedback signal.
- A highly complex system (i.e. many layers) also requires a coordinating agent that is familiar with all layers and can identify accumulating transgressions.
- A complex system fails when too many layers have transgressed and or failed to provide negative feedback.
Reading Notes
Risk management in a dynamic society: a modelling problem, Jens Rasmussen, 1997