Title: Professionalisation in safety: in the heart of emergency response

Authors: Christian Foussard; Wim Van Wassenhove; Cédric Denis-Remis

Addresses: Consultant Risk Management and Process Safety, IHEIE - Institute for Higher Education in Innovation and Entrepreneurship, MINES Paris, PSL University, 60 Boulevard Saint Michel, 75006, Paris, France ' IHEIE - Institute for Higher Education in Innovation and Entrepreneurship, MINES Paris, PSL University, 60 Boulevard Saint Michel, 75006, Paris, France ' IHEIE - Institute for Higher Education in Innovation and Entrepreneurship, MINES Paris, PSL University, 60 Boulevard Saint Michel, 75006, Paris, France

Abstract: During a large-scale exercise designed to test the effectiveness of a Seveso type emergency plan of an industrial site, a specific observation method of the simulation was implemented. It is articulated around the combination of specialised observers (post graduate students in Industrial Risk Management) that focus on key people, essential tasks and paramount locations that drive the dynamics of the emergency response. Associated with an interpretation model called structure-relation-meaning, this method allows to produce three levels of organisational learning (single loop, double loop and triple loop). Resulting knowledges benefit the company, the administration, the students and the faculties. This paper presents the experimental setup, the analysis methodology, then the results obtained are discussed. The paper's goal is to give useful information to safety professionals in companies who can integrate partly or entirely the observation method for emergency response simulation. It is also useful for faculties that teach on emergency response simulation.

Keywords: organisational learning; loop learning; emergency response; resilience engineering; sensemaking; professionalisation in safety.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEM.2023.129405

International Journal of Emergency Management, 2023 Vol.18 No.1, pp.47 - 67

Received: 23 Apr 2021
Accepted: 20 Sep 2021
Published online: 08 Mar 2023 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article