A Quantification Method Evaluating Difficulty of Safety Culture Factors

There is a growing recognition that organizational factors such as safety culture significantly contribute to the safe operation of nuclear facilities. It was found that safety culture influences human/organizational safety performance, as organizations with higher maturity safety culture have lower accident rates [1-3]. By the necessity of this, various definitions of the concept of safety culture have been proposed according to different viewpoints [4-10]. In the nuclear field, the IAEA has defined safety culture as “That assembly of characteristics and attitudes in organizations and individuals which establishes that, as an overriding priority, nuclear plant safety issues receive the attention warranted by their significance” [6]. The purpose of addressing safety culture is to develop safety outcomes to achieve a higher level of safety. To effectively promote safety culture, an in-depth analysis of safety culture is required, such as to analyze how certain aspects or elements of safety culture (hereinafter referred to as safety culture elements) affect certain aspects of safety, what characteristics of safety culture elements have, and how these characteristics affect safety performance. Characteristics for each safety culture element can be analyzed as a deductive method. In this study, the concept of degree of difficulty is introduced as a generic term for the extent and difficulty of efforts made to meet safety culture principles. By introducing the concept of degree of difficulty for each element of safety culture, it is possible to analyze the safety culture from a decomposable point of view. For example, it is possible to determine whether a safety culture element that is frequently an issue is because it is difficult to comply with related principles. And it can help to establish an effective and appropriate level of response strategy according to the analysis result. In addition, safety culture represents the culture of the organization from a safety point of view, each organization has its own unique characteristics. In other words, the viewpoint on safety culture may differ depending on the characteristics or role of the organization. For example, regulatory agencies and operating agencies may have different views on a safety culture principle. To achieve high nuclear safety at the national level, communication between various organizations such as operating agencies and regulatory agencies is essential. However, if each organization has a different view on which of the various elements constituting the safety culture is an obstacle to achieving a high level of safety culture, it will be difficult to gather consensus in establishing appropriate strategies. It is required to understand at what point their views differ on safety culture. The introduced method can reveal the safety culture factors in which the differences in viewpoints are large and will help to promote mutual understanding between organizations.