A Concept of Information-Based Strategy for Accident Prevention

Abstract

With the increasing use of sensor technology, it has become common practice to use collected data to reduce uncertainty and ensure safety. This paper presents the concept of an information-based strategy for accident prevention that puts more weight on hazard detection and monitoring and makes use of data obtained. The information-based strategy can be considered as a new barrier for safety management. The functionality of this strategy is neither to reduce the probability of an undesired event nor to reduce its consequence directly but to create a state of knowing for decision-making. The proposed concept can provide theoretical support for remote safety management of e.g., offshore installations. In addition, it can promote investigation about safety information environment in the organization and information behavior in resolving risk-related problems. In this article, some existing accident causation theories to provide the rationale for the proposed concept are elaborated. In addition, it gives an overview of typical types of information needs and measures to facilitate the information-based strategy. At the end, some challenges and problems which need to be solved to promote the application of the proposed concept are discussed.