Yes, safety can be exaggerated!

I know, you should not believe things you read in ads (see picture below), but unfortunately I have lately met several civilian and military professionals all used to dangerous situations claiming that:

"You should always chose the safest alternative!"

An ad claiming that "safety can nerver be exaggerated". (C) H Liwång 2014.

However, if that was true nothing would ever be accomplished. The scary thing is that even if I point out that choosing the safest alternative can seriously decrease the gain most stand by their first statement promoting safety first!

Most people I meet seems to, on a personal level (and maybe unconsciously), weigh expected gain against expected risk (however sometimes with very personal utility functions for gain and risk). For some/several government safety officials and military personnel (with a professional life that does not come down to a finical bottom line) this basic understanding for risk management seems to disappear. Can it be because they have lost track of what they are trying to achieve, or that the achievements are on such a high and/or abstract level that they don’t see them? Because, only if there is no meaning with your activity, only then does it make sense to always chose the safest alternative.

Piracy off Nigeria: Captain claims that Chevron and Edison Chouest (ECO) didn’t do enough

In October 2013 the support ship C-Retriever was boarded and two out of the crew were taken hostage. According to Courthouse News Service one of the two, the Captain Thomas, now sues the company for not doing enough to prevent the attack.

The attack came after other attacks on ships and personnel and threats of more attacks as well as after reports on security weaknesses such as how the communication was performed. According to the captain ECO did not implement sufficient security measures to deal with the risks.

According to the “Ship security challenges in high-risk areas: Manageable or insurmountable?” (presented on this blog earlier) preparing for such maritime security threats is not easy, but possible. It is not possible to entirely avoid risks, but given that there are high risks in the operations area the ship operators must analyze them and implement suitable measures of protection. How much protection that is needed is given by the level of the risks, but also by the costs of the measures. But operations where the risks exceed a maximum level (which at least for safety is quantified by IMO (2000)) must be stopped. According to the International Association of Classification Societies (IACS) “It is important to recognize that the company is responsible for identifying the risks associated with its particular ships, operations and trade. It is no longer sufficient to rely on compliance with generic statutory and class requirements, and with general industry guidance. … It is for the company to choose methods appropriate to its organizational structure, its ships and its trades. The methods may be more or less formal, but they must be systematic if assessment and response are to be complete and effective, and the entire exercise should be documented so as to provide evidence of the decision-making process" (IACS 2012).

Therefore, in my mind the lawsuit comes down to if and how the company used the information about the threats in a structured analysis and then actually implemented suitable controls (and updated the analysis and controls as there were new information and the situation changed). However, the analysis must also take into account how different measures affect the crews', but also the threats, perception of the security measures according to the figure below. Especially off West Africa this is not an easy task!

Cyclic version of the ship security risk management. Of extra importance is dependencies
between internal and external conditions and the effect of risk controls (Liwång et al. 2014).

Also, unfortunately not that many know how a suitable ship security risk management should look like!

Liwång, H., Sörenson, K., & Österman, C. (2014). Ship security challenges in high risk areas: Manageable or insurmountable? WMU Journal of Maritime Affairs.

IACS. (2012). A Guide to Risk Assessment in Ship Operations. London: International Association of Classification societies.

IMO. (2000). Formal safety assessment, Decision parameters including risk acceptance criteria, Submitted by Norway (MSC 72/16). London: International Maritime Organization.

Strangers hiding in the Stockholm Archipelago and the perception of security?

Next week I’ll give a talk on a National Transport Conference on the possible effects of a deteriorating security situation in the Baltic Sea on the vital shipping to and from Sweden (Maritime security for Swedish needs?).

Last week in Victoria, BC (Canada) experts such as Professor G. Till and Commodore (Ret) L. Cordner at the Maritime Security Challenges conference made it clear that maritime security is about creating reassurance. If that reassurance can’t be produced the security situation deteriorates which will affect the shipping system. This is the basis for the research project I’m working on and the research questions are:

what do we (or the people responsible for Swedish maritime security risk governance) actually know about the influences and dependencies that create security and perception of security, and

how does different security incidents affects transports to Sweden?

The project was first presented on this blog in January 2014.

I think this is an important project, however the Ukraine crisis and increased Russian activity in the Baltic area has given the perception of maritime security I talk about a public voice. A week ago Swedish media reported about how the Russian Navy on international water gave orders to a Finnish ship with Swedish researchers to move away (which actually isn’t that strange, most navies wouldn’t like a foreign research team with subsea sensors in the middle of an exercise).

The Royal Swedish Navy performing sub sea work in archipelago waters. (C) Hans Liwång 2011. 

However also, since yesterday the Swedish Navy is investigating subsea activity in archipelago waters just off Stockholm and also being relatively open about the nature of the operation (fifteen years ago I’m not sure that the navy would have felt that they had anything to gain from calling a press conference on such an incident, now the situation obviously has changed). Subsequently, even if the maritime security in the Baltic Sea may be the same as ten months ago when I started my research project, the perception of security has definitely changed. An important awakening maybe, but one that is potentially dangerous to the modern day life in Sweden by affecting our vital transports.

So even though it could be the case that the conditions for performing safe and secure sea transport to and from Sweden hasn’t changed in reality, the effect of a change in perception may have increased uncertainties enough for starting a downwards spiral of security perception effecting the effectiveness which in turn put new challenges and uncertainty on the ship operators and so on…

How should we break this possible downward spiral? Well we’re back to reassurance, and reassurance at sea is produced with presence (on the surface, not in the air or under the surface). A positive reassuring presence that is reliable!

A systematic flaw when weighing gain against risk

In a Swedish newspaper article/blog the Swedish journalist Clas Svahn discusses the book ”Katastroferunder 100 år” (Catastrophes during 100 years) written by the Danish researcher and historian Rasmus Dahlberg. Reading the article I react on/against the view or role of both humans and technology.

The effect of “human negligence never seems to be reduced. The more people we become and the more technical solutions introduced the more sources of possible misery, there will be. ...  The common thread here is without a doubt humans and the fact that we are not flawless, but full of arrogance, laziness and influenced by peer pressure and therefore takes decisions that sometimes result in disasters that no one could have predicted”.

I don’t like this perspective. Technology and technical solutions are not introduced to increase safety, they are introduced in order to make things possible (that was not possible before). At the introduction there is an unconscious (and sometimes conscious) process of weighing the gain against the risks. If the gain does not weigh heavier, the solutions will not be introduced (that’s how our laziness works and has made humans successful at spreading over this planet). Look for instance at inventions such as the bungyjump cord, the machinegun or the car. Not safe at all, but enough people has perceived the benefits as more important than the risks and therefore used these things. No one thinks these inventions are harmless and most disasters they can lead to are envisioned and predicted (including an inhabitable Earth).

As I’ve writtenbefore humans are very good at feeling/identifying when something is going wrong. In most of these instances humans react and stop catastrophes in the making. This happens all the time and is most often not documented (and the saved lives not counted). Humans are fantastic!

Also, the amount of people on this world is only possible thanks to our inventions. Technology kills many, but supports many more (at least for now). And looking at how we destroy our planet, it is not human errors leading to catastrophes that are killing the earth. It is a systematic flaw in weighing gain against risk. This because there are two things that don’t work as well as they could, or should:

-          The process of weighing potential gain against the risks (today, many introductions of new technology are too complex for our intuition).

-          Our never ending strive for (economic) growth skew our perspective on gain and therefore (can) let us introduce things that we don’t need.

Almost all attacks lead to substantial consequences!

During 2011 off Somalia (or by Somalia based piracy) about 20 percent (48 out of 237) of the reported attacks led to boarding or hijacking. This was a lower number compared to previous year’s thanks you several different factors, such as:

-          In 2011 most crews and ship operators had understood the seriousness of piracy and enforced effective measures.

-          The naval forces in the area were more effective.

(but also that all attacks (but one) was on a steaming ship)

So far this year about 65 percent of the attacks off West Africa has led to boarding or hijacking and in South East Asia almost all (>90 percent) of the about 100 reported attacks has led to boarding and/or hijacking.

One reason for this shift is that the reporting frequency of incidents off Somalia was high, in other areas the reports of unsuccessful attacks is not as good. But even despite this statistical error there is a substantial increase in the percentage of attacks leading to the worst possible consequences.

 

Worldwide pirates had a success rate of 50 percent in 2011, 2013 it was above 80 percent!

One could even argue that piracy in areas such as off West Africa and in South East Asia pose a bigger problem than what piracy did off Somalia in 2011. This because a high success rate for pirates lures more into the piracy business and also affects the crew’s negatively. Also, the fact that Somalia based piracy attacked steaming ships made the problem easier to handle, it is much harder to effectively protect berthed or anchored ships.

Therefore, the work off Somalia, often perceived as a success, was a special case that unfortunately can give the wrong impressions on what level of effort is needed to reduce piracy.

So, the work has just began and don’t let the success off Somalia fool us in think that this problem is manageable…  

Ship security challenges in high-risk areas: Manageable or insurmountable?

Article abstract:

“Piracy can lead to risks so high that they, according to the International Maritime Organization, are tolerable only if risk reduction is not practicable or is disproportionate to the benefits achieved. Therefore, there is a need for reducing ship security risks in relation to antagonistic threats such as piracy.

The aim of this study is to identify challenges for ship operators when developing their ship security management. Furthermore, this study also investigates two central aspects in the analysis; understanding the threat and understanding how a security threat affects the crew and operation of the ship.

It is clear from the analysis that the importance of subjective aspects beyond a ship operators’ direct control is high. This seems to be the fact for all aspects of the risk management process. The situation is also dynamic as the security risk, as well as the risk perception, can change dramatically even though there are no actual operational changes. As a result, the ship security management process is highly iterative and depends on situations on board as well as conditions out of the ship operator’s control.

In order to make ship security manageable the risk management has to put particular focus on methodological understanding, relevant system understanding and well defined risk acceptance criteria as well as on including all levels of the organization in the risk reduction implementation and on a continuous monitoring.”

Hans Liwång, Karl Sörenson and Cecilia Österman

The full article is available at springer.com, for more details see post Now easy to download.

An examination of the implementation of risk based approaches in military operations

Article Abstract:

"Today several nations utilise risk based approaches in military planning. However, the discussion on limitations with the approaches in regard to aspects such as uncertainties, the nature of the threat and risk to civilians is limited.
 

The aim of this work is to identify important challenges when applying risk based approaches to military activity. This article discusses risk based approaches in general and their military applications. Five generic quality requirements on risk analysis are presented from research in risk philosophy. Two military application areas for risk analysis: military intelligence, and risk management in legal assessments are analysed in relation to the presented quality requirements on risk analysis.

From the analysis it is clear that risk analysis is an integral part of the decision-making analysis and cannot be separated in time, space or organisationally from the decision-making process in general. Defining the scenario to analyse, including the time span, is a central task in risk analysis and will affect every aspect of the risk estimation. Therefore, the principles for scenario definition must be communicated and continuously updated throughout the organisation. Handling the uncertainties throughout the process is also important, especially if the aim is a resilient military system."

Hans Liwång, Marika Ericson, Martin Bang

Journal of Military Studies, Vol 5, No 2 (2014)

Journal of Military Studies (JMS) is an international peer-reviewed multidiscipline publication of selected Military Sciences. Publishers: National Defense University, Finland and Finnish Society of Military Sciences