Cindynics, The Science of Danger. Guy Planchette
managing risk considers the internal and external context of the organization, including human behavior and cultural factors.
However, while the cindynics approach is completely in line with the prescriptions of the ISO 31000:2018 standard, it obligatorily precedes the risk assessment phase by the study of an assessment phase of all types of hazards (or sources of risk).
A “risk mapping” tool is commonly used in risk management in order to create and share a risk frame of reference.
Cindynics tools also use a frame of reference which concerns sharing through a process that is in line with the recommendations of the ISO 31000:2018 standard but whose purpose is to highlight the hazards through matrices of deficits and dissonances.
NOTE.– In the remainder of this book and to comply with the ISO 31000:2018 standard, the term “risk source” will be used instead of “hazard”.
Then, to become fully aware of the originality of cindynics involves discovering that its concepts incorporate a method, tools and processes that are adapted to the complexity of systems, as well as an approach to the study of risk sources adapted to the complexity of systems.
1.1. The approach
During its life, any organization receives many internal or external requests (desired development, opportunities, imposed constraints, changes in objectives, realization of new projects, reactivation of a process, changes in regulatory markets, staff turnover, sociological changes, etc). As a result, any organization modifies itself voluntarily or not with time through these solicitations called transformation operators.
These inescapable developments, whether desired or endured, generate as many potential weaknesses as strengths (physical, organizational and psychological).
The cindynics approach therefore primarily monitors the fragility of collective activity situations, that is, the emergence of dangerous zones (see section 2.3.1) within an organization, thus weakening its capacity for resilience. These fragilities, due to the transformation operators, lead to deviations from a nominal or desired organization (state of the art, regulations, standards, charters, procedures, data and culture). The tensions generated by these gaps become risk sources that can lead to incidents, accidents or disasters.
This approach is therefore similar to that of physiopathology, a discipline that deals with disturbances in the normal mode of functioning of the constituent elements of a living organism.
All of the originality of cindynics lies in this ability to detect these sources of particular risks produced by these imbalances. And if, in doing so, potential forces are detected, it would be a pity not to take advantage of them.
When it comes to analyzing technical risks (which are describable), the methods and tools of dependability are perfectly suitable.
On the contrary, other categories of risk sources, more related to human, organizational, managerial, cultural and environmental aspects, being more difficult to identify, receive much less attention in order to be identified and described. As a result, cindynics, by placing the human and the organization at the heart of the complexity of organizations, focuses first on these categories of risk sources and then uses the MADS-MOSAR method to deal with technical risks.
Thus, the notion of an activity situation has become the founding concept of cindynics because it obliges us to define what is necessary to talk about when approaching a hazard study. The terms “situation” and “activity” still need to be defined:
– “situation” is to be understood etymologically as “the location of a structure”. It is also, according to the Larousse definition, the set of events, circumstances and concrete relations in the midst of which someone or a group finds itself;
– the word “activity” is borrowed from the Latin “activitas” or “vis agendis”, “the will to do”. Later, the meaning of “activity” became “exercise of the power to act”, then movement.
This is, indeed, the meaning given to the activity situation which integrates notions of history, geographical space, actors and movement, and therefore dynamism and development.
1.2. The method
Based on the fundamental concept, namely the activity situation, the resulting cindynics method is based on two notions as follows:
– the characterization of this activity situation by an objective approach of the internal and external contexts4, complemented by other observable criteria (see section 1.3);
– the qualification of hazardous areas within it, whether directly observable or not. It is therefore imperative to acquire the ability to describe unobservable elements. This ability was brought about by the scientific advances of the beginning of the 20th century. Indeed, since then, the reality of the world has evolved considerably thanks to two fundamental discoveries: quantum theory, which has brought to light the existence of invisible aspects of matter, and complexity5.
Consequently, in order to succeed in describing the unobservable elements, cindynics adopts a method of description known as the “method of relativized conceptualization (MRC)” [MUG 77] proposed by Mioara Mugur Schätcher, a specialist in quantum physics. This method, born from the inability of physicists to observe – by means of measuring instruments, even very sophisticated ones – the invisible phenomena existing within matter, is based on a new process of constructing knowledge of the unobservable.
Through repeated observations, descriptions of the impalpable or unobservable are obtained by producing more or less objective images called “aspects” to ensure qualification.
The multiplication of qualifications carried out by observations in arbitrarily large quantities leads to a qualification grid used to establish a “relativized description” of the unobservable.
This method of describing risk sources that are not easily observable thus makes it possible to identify and evaluate the gaps or inconsistencies generated by the inevitable changes that organizations experience6.
We have already noted that the original organization cannot be considered intangible. It must be adapted to this inescapability in order to prevent any possible dysfunction. This notion of temporality is all the more important since it is often slow, sometimes almost impalpable, evolutions that are at the origin of disasters. It is therefore a question of integrating the notion of transformation operators (see Chapter 2, section 2.1).
1.3. The tools
The set of tools used by cindynics identifies the devices used to characterize activity situations and to qualify areas considered dangerous:
– the characterization of situations is performed through criteria relating to five domains (spatial, geographical, chronological, contextual and networks of actors) (see Chapter 2, section 2.2);
– the qualification of hazardous areas cannot be limited to the technical qualifier alone, it broadens