65th ESReDA Seminar From risk imagination to safety intervention – Managing risks with knowledge

ESReDA’s ‘Risk, Knowledge, Management’ (RKM) project group (PG) addresses the intricate relationships between risk, knowledge and management, aiming to find new ideas for preventing accidents and improving safety management with better utilisation of knowledge. The RKM PG organises the 65th ESReDA seminar to foster an exchange of ideas and expert debate. The National Centre of Scientific Research Demokritos in Athens will provide the forum.

The 65th ESReDA Seminar follows the successful 58th ESReDA Seminar on ‘Using Knowledge to Manage Risks and Threats: Practices and Challenges’ organised by JRC Institute of Energy (Petten, the Netherlands) and held virtually in June 2021.

Although we are told that we live and work in ‘information and knowledge’ society. Preventing accidents and enhancing resilience, by using the relevant safety knowledge and expertise, is not granted and requires continuous efforts to overcome the hurdles in an ‘age of uncertainty’.

The main objective of this forthcoming seminar is to identify the enablers and barriers to the production of knowledge concerning safety risks and resilience and its effectiveness in decision-making and other management and operational activities. The key problematic question we will ask is: ‘What does a management team, a regulator or a front-line operator need to know and can use to manage risks effectively?’

The purpose of the seminar is to reflect upon the following topics:

• Organisational characteristics that promote the ability to invest in identifying new threats, in imagining risks in a context of uncertainty.
• Tools and frameworks that facilitate evidence-based decision-making and effective safety interventions.
• Individual and collective capabilities and non-technical skills relevant to the sharing of information (including inconvenient truths) between the sharp end of operations and the blunt end where systems are designed; plans, schedules and standards are established; tradeoffs are made, and resources are allocated.
• Anticipating and managing the information and knowledge that will be needed at different stages of the system life-cycle; evidencing the added value of building synergy between safety and knowledge management.
• Recognising and rewarding the diverse types of expertise needed to identify early warning signs, interpret observations, analyse data, communicate information, and preserve knowledge.
• Specific challenges to ensure that valid information, relevant knowledge, ‘proofs’ but also ‘doubts’ are available to regulators, the justice system, the media, and the public.
• Technological innovation for risk knowledge management to improve safety and resilience analysis.
• Democratisation of knowledge through participatory approaches and accessibility of information to non-specialists.
• Combination and usage of distributed knowledge in complex risk scenarios for crisis management.
• The importance and the role of technology to analyse and to manage adequately risk knowledge as well as to communicate it effectively.
• The role of culture in risk management and the importance of risk communication.
  

The 65th ESReDA seminar will be a forum for exploring the above mentioned and other related questions. We aim to discuss theories, concepts, and experiences of enhancing the use of knowledge for better risk analysis, management and governance. Authors are invited to present their research and operational proposals and raise challenges, but also to discuss successes and failures in enhancing risk management through better use of risk knowledge. We want to encourage new ideas, scientific papers, conceptual papers, case studies and cross-sectoral and inter-disciplinary research on the theme of challenges and practices for using knowledge in risk and resilience analysis, management, and governance. This seminar will bring together researchers, practitioners, specialists and decision-makers to discuss strategies and practical experiences.

BAG-INTEL will present some of our research output at the event – Stay tuned for more details.

For more information on the event: https://www.esreda.org/event/65th-esreda-seminar-november-14th-15th-2024-ncsr-demokritos-athens-greece/