Cindynics, The Science of Danger. Guy Planchette
the specialized journal “Les Annales des Mines”4 devoted its entire issue to major technological risks. Five major chapters covered: risk assessment methods, the industry faced with major risks, prevention and regulation, preparation and management of crisis situations, society and major risk.
At the beginning of 1987, the French Association of Executives for Social and Economic Progress (Association Française de Cadre Dirigeants pour le Progrès Social et Économique, ACADI) chaired by Kervern, organized a series of meetings bringing together experts from different backgrounds: chemistry, nuclear, aeronautics, oil and so on. From these meetings, the idea was born to organize an international conference on the subject. ACADI was joined by the magazine “Industries et Techniques” and the insurer UAP. An organizing committee, bringing together the best French experts in risk management, worked hard for several months to explore this new scientific field. It was led by Michel Horps, one of the directors of Crédit Agricole, and Francine Londez, a specialist in the design of large technological meetings.
Thus, on December 7 and 8, 1987, 1475 people from 13 countries, representing 30 industrial sectors, 320 companies and 90 universities or research centers, met at UNESCO in Paris to compare their experiences and try to define a common policy.
About 100 high-level conference-debates show the real interest of the participants in what was beginning to be called “the science of danger”.
Seven commissions met to address:
– progress in safety in large, complex systems (lessons learned from major industrial accidents, risk control in large companies, reliability/organization/systems-expertise/decision-making);
– the human factor and safety (typology of human failures, tools and methods to integrate the human factor);
– management of global environmental risks;
– the preparation and coordination of the treatment of technological disasters;
– progress in safety in diffuse systems (domestic and transportation risks, workplace accidents);
– the economic and financial aspects of safety (prevention, insurance, European standardization);
– the collective perception of risks and accidents.
At the closing session, a certain number of commitments were made. Among them, to give a name to this new discipline and to promote its teaching throughout Europe. An institute (Institut Européen des Cindyniques) created for this purpose was set up in Paris in January 1990.
The birth and activities of the IMdR working group
Kervern’s powerful and modern intuitions have allowed an understanding of the genesis of pathogens in numerous situations where many actors exist. However, his writings, changing thinking habits, were not easily assimilated, especially since the vocabulary that was used was unusual.
The Institut pour la Maîtrise des Risques (IMdR) therefore considered it essential to create a working and reflection group to make cindynics available to everyone in order to share their interest and usefulness, and to show that this approach is particularly well adapted to the complexity of today’s world.
Working group members with different professional backgrounds (engineers, safety professionals, teachers, researchers, etc.) pooled their experiences to achieve these objectives by meeting between 2013 and 2017 on five afternoons per year. The general idea of the participants was to put themselves in the position of someone who wanted to use the cindynics concepts without knowing how to do it.
Initially, the approach consisted of deciphering, simplifying and sharing the terminology used to define cindynics concepts, without distorting their spirit.
In a second step, the members of the working group applied risk analysis to an example of a disaster (Bhopal, see Chapter 8) and proceeded with an in-depth analysis of the approach.
This study first learned the need to have sufficient information to establish the context of an activity situation (see Chapter 2, section 2.2) to be analyzed, to identify the horizons that will characterize the scenario in which the drama unfolded, and to make a judicious choice about the actors shaping the situation.
During the various information collections, the learning process consisted of carrying out successive analyses of the content of the data collected (see Chapter 2, section 2.3.2). This work of qualitative data5 analysis used a research method from the social sciences “aiming to build theories, not from predetermined hypotheses, but from collected data” (see Appendix 3). This method allowed all of the elements of the activity situation to be progressively built in a more exhaustive way.
In addition, it has made it possible to specify the order of the stages of the cindynics process. The results obtained led to the understanding that before proceeding to the causal study of the event initiating the disaster, it is preferable to start from the study of a dangerous situation creating vulnerabilities, thus offering its fragilities to any disruptive event.
This exercise also highlighted the difficulty of being confronted with the complexity of the universe being studied and of going beyond the traditional framework of “cause tree” studies, starting from the event at the origin of the accident. This discovery was expressed by one of the participants: “in short, the cindynics approach appears to induce a particular posture of attention to the elements of the situation, beyond the physical system”. They became aware that the context in which the event occurs is as important to study as the event itself.
Faced with complexity where everything is the cause and vice versa, the group was confronted with a change in thinking: because this complexity requires a looped thinking process, taking into account the different levels of organization.
At the mid-point of the group’s work, it was deemed useful to reflect on what the participants had learned and retained during the working group meetings:
Ten responses were received to a questionnaire addressed to each of them. They were first processed using the content analysis method (see Appendix 3). This made it possible to draw up the following synthesis. This synthesis highlighted the differences in approaches and needs according to the length of participation in the working group and prior knowledge of cindynics concepts.
What was seen as important and rewarding:
– Concerning the work of the group:- For five of us, the plurality of the points of view expressed appeared pleasant.- For four, it was the atmosphere: good mood, sustained exchanges (even if they were sometimes too long), freedom of speech.- For three, the methods used seemed effective: the principle of work in sub-groups, the use of tables and hyperspaces of danger (see Chapter 1, section 1.3), the definition of horizons and actors, regular reports, theoretical contributions, periodicity... and especially the work on real cases.- This approach stimulated personal work outside of the group, either as an extension of the group, by participating in other places of reflection, or by taking the theory further by consulting key works.- On the contrary, there was the impression that the group was venturing along several paths without really concretizing any of them, because the initial objective was to prepare a document to popularize cindynics, which seemed to have been abandoned.
– Concerning the work on cindynics:- By