Safety Culture: The Democratization of Flight Data

• Overview of chapter in forthcoming Incremental Safety Practices book.  An early large-scale empirical analysis of incremental safety was undertaken, assessing pilots' performance after obtaining access to personal data.  A change in behavior was observed, yet epistemic and philosophical issues arise from what 'incremental safety' practically means.
• Discussion of the rapid advances in technology that allow the worker, versus the organization, to identify acceptable outcomes and nominal performance.  What are the consequences for incremental safety when workers self-diagnose and change behavior, versus an organizational approach?
  Discussion that 'normal work' constitutes the 'dark matter' of safety science: it exerts gravitational influence, yet has been mostly invisible to measurement.  Personal flight data represents the first instrument capable of illuminating this dark matter. Applying science philosopher Hasok Chang's framework to incremental safety (Chang, 2004), measurement systems and concepts co-evolve, and we must therefore develop the theoretical vocabulary for what normal performance actually is.   

Presentation from IWISC-1: 1st International Workshop on Incremental Safety Culture held on 24 June in Copenhagen.