In 2007 he read a paper entitled the ‘Human Factors Analysis
and Classification System’, and became interested in how
this could be applied to recreational and technical diving as
there appeared to be many similarities. At this time he started
researching his own academic paper on the subject of Human Factors
in Recreational Scuba Diving - an area which has not been addressed.
His paper is now nearing completion and will hopefully be published
in 2010.
In 2007 he also started a sub-forum on the recreational diving
forum ‘Yorkshire Divers’ called ‘I Learned
About Diving from That’ which provided an output for divers
to post details of incidents where they have made mistakes and
highlight the lesson learned in an environment where they would
not be criticised; this would hopefully allow others to learn
from the poster’s mistakes. This idea was taken directly
from the RAF Flight Safety program called ‘I Learned about
Flying from That’ whose slogan was ‘Learn from your
mistakes, better still, learn from someone else’s’.
As of July 2010 there had been more than 280 incidents posted
on the forum in an open format.
In early 2010, after spending
sometime looking at incidents and accidents where needless
injury and death had been caused, he decided to form a company,
called Cognitas, with some like-minded individuals to address
this problem. The aim will be to produce and run a website
called the Diving Incident and Safety Resource Centre (DISRC)
which will act as a single focal point for all matters concerning
diver safety.
The DISRC will be a central repository for all safety information
concerning recreational (not commercial) diving and will contain
incident reports, lessons learned, safety guidelines, agency
standards, research papers and any other information that
could improve diver’s safety. There would be an improved
diving incident reporting system called the National Diving
and Incident Database (NDID) and this would be completely
training agency independent. The NDID would hold 2 sorts of
data: firstly, it would capture the number, type and basic
details (including human factors classifications) of the incidents
occurring using a standardised format across all training
and agencies and government agencies in a similar fashion
to the BSAC Incident Report. Secondly, it would provide a
central repository for lessons learned, something similar
to the Yorkshire Divers sub-forum, where divers are able to
search in a more dynamic way and access reports that contained
more detail than the current annual BSAC report.
There has been some resistance to this proposal, but Cognitas
will be conducting a presentation to the British Diving Safety
Group on 7 September 2010 outlining the issues which Cognitas
believes exist and providing potential solutions to the shortfall.
Gareth’s presentation at Eurotek 2010 will discuss
the way in which Human Factors (which isn’t just ergonomics)
can be applied to recreational and technical scuba diving
at all levels - the individual, the supervisor or instructor,
and the organisation, in a way to promote and improve diver
safety. However, for safety to further improve, there needs
to be a sea change in the attitude to safety at those three
levels, and that change starts with highlighting the problem.
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