TY - JOUR
T1 - Reflecting on the safety zoo
T2 - Developing an integrated pandemics barrier model using early lessons from the Covid-19 pandemic
AU - Lindhout, Paul
AU - Reniers, Genserik
PY - 2020
Y1 - 2020
N2 - Our current predicament, the Covid-19 pandemic is first of all a health crisis. However, social disruption and economic damage are becoming visible some 7 months after the Wuhan City outbreak early December 2019. The authors wondered what could have been done better in prevention and repression of the Covid-19 pandemic from a safety management and risk control point of view. Within a case study framework, the authors gathered literature on pandemics, about country response effectiveness, and about human behaviour in the face of danger. The results consist of a safety management oriented narrative about the current pandemic, several critical observations about the current paradigms and shortcomings of preparation, and a number of opportunities for improvements of countermeasures. Many of the proverbial animals in the safety zoo, representing typical behaviours, were observed in action. Based on well proven risk analysis methods – risk management, event tree, scenarios, bowtie – the authors then analyse the generic sequence of events in a pandemic, starting from root causes, through prevention, via the outbreak of a pathogen, through mitigation to long term effects. Based on this analysis the authors propose an integrated pandemics barrier model. In this model the core is a generic pandemic scenario that is distinguishing five risk controllable sequential steps before an outbreak. The authors contend that the prevention of pandemics via safety management based biohazard risk control is both possible and of paramount importance since it can stop pandemic scenarios altogether even before an outbreak.
AB - Our current predicament, the Covid-19 pandemic is first of all a health crisis. However, social disruption and economic damage are becoming visible some 7 months after the Wuhan City outbreak early December 2019. The authors wondered what could have been done better in prevention and repression of the Covid-19 pandemic from a safety management and risk control point of view. Within a case study framework, the authors gathered literature on pandemics, about country response effectiveness, and about human behaviour in the face of danger. The results consist of a safety management oriented narrative about the current pandemic, several critical observations about the current paradigms and shortcomings of preparation, and a number of opportunities for improvements of countermeasures. Many of the proverbial animals in the safety zoo, representing typical behaviours, were observed in action. Based on well proven risk analysis methods – risk management, event tree, scenarios, bowtie – the authors then analyse the generic sequence of events in a pandemic, starting from root causes, through prevention, via the outbreak of a pathogen, through mitigation to long term effects. Based on this analysis the authors propose an integrated pandemics barrier model. In this model the core is a generic pandemic scenario that is distinguishing five risk controllable sequential steps before an outbreak. The authors contend that the prevention of pandemics via safety management based biohazard risk control is both possible and of paramount importance since it can stop pandemic scenarios altogether even before an outbreak.
KW - Bowtie
KW - Integrated pandemics barrier model
KW - Lessons learned
KW - Pandemic
KW - Paradigm
KW - Safety management
KW - Safety zoo
KW - Scenario
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85087897349&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.ssci.2020.104907
DO - 10.1016/j.ssci.2020.104907
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85087897349
SN - 0925-7535
VL - 130
JO - Safety Science
JF - Safety Science
M1 - 104907
ER -