Integration of FRAM and Social Network Analysis to Analyse Distributed Situational Awareness in Socio-technical Systems

Abstract

This paper proposes a method to integrate Functional Resonance Analysis Method - (FRAM) and social networks to analyse complex socio-technical systems and specially system´s Distributed Situational Awareness - (DSA). For this purpose an accident of a chemical process was revisited and social network analysis - (SNA) was used in order to measure Situational Awareness - (SA) of the system as well as DSA dynamics. The purpose of this paper is to show that SA is very important to maintain system’s safety within a complex socio-technical system. More specifically, DSA which comprises all information provided by different actors in a system. FRAM’s modelling is a powerful tool in order to understand what are the system’s variabilities, to what extent that variability can produce resonance in the system, and from there measures should be adopted in order to enhance system’s resilience. FRAM’s model was established, and DSA was analysed using social network. It was possible to identify that the accident’s root cause was linked to missing DSA. As future works, it is suggested that other industrial systems be analysed with the proposed method to verify contributions to system safety analysis of implementation of measures to better distribute SA within the entire system, as well as to analyse the multilayer network representation and its metrics to DSA.