Development of Database for Incidents related to Safety Culture using Harmonized Safety Culture Model

Safety culture refers to how an organizational culture prioritizes and values safety. Since the safety culture factors consist of a multi-layered organic structure such as employers, managers, and executives, vulnerable factors related to safety culture may differ depending on the organization. Weaknesses in safety culture have proven to contribute significantly to incidents and accidents across different industries, including the nuclear industry [1,2]. This is why it is important for people associated with organizations to understand and adhere to the characteristics of an effective safety culture. To this end, nuclear and nuclear-related organizations have in place the sets of safety culture guidelines. For example, there is a safety culture model developed by Korea Institute of Nuclear Safety (KINS) to inspect the safety culture in Korea [3]. However, the guidelines from various institutions were similar in intent but different in structure. This can create unnecessary complexity and uncertainty in understanding expectations and implementing programs to enhance safety culture. To address these challenges, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) published the Harmonized safety culture model (HSCM) by discussing existing safety culture frameworks to harmonize different sets of guidelines from institutions including the World Association of Nuclear Operators (WANO), and the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO) as well as regulatory agencies. This model provides a description of the traits and attributes that are present in organizations with an effective culture for safety [4]. These factors, as representing the values and basic assumptions in organizations, can be used to measure the level of safety culture. Therefore, this study aims to develop a database that derived safety culture factors using HSCM for incidents occurred during seventeen years (1994 – 2020) due to lack of safety culture according to the Operational Performance Information System for nuclear power plant (OPIS) of the KINS. Thereafter, it is expected that the database developed in this study can be used to evaluate the different’ vulnerable factors according to the organizations.