Hazard Identification

I post this article here in an effort to help fellow aviators to familiarize themselves with hazard identification.

When we are talking about hazard identification, we are referring to only one specific element of safety management and the first part of risk management or safety risk assessment.

This is only an article and we will only cover the basics of hazard identification in order to be understandable by the majority of the readers, thankfully there is a variety of informational and training material available and many safety related trainings. There is a plenty of links in the sidebar that you can refer.

What is a hazard?

Hazard is anything that can cause harm.

Hazard identification is the procedure that enables the organization to identify the hazards related to its operation or production.

Because through safety management we have a holistic approach to all organizational functions, harm can be caused to:

• the organization itself (i.e. reputation);
• the organization and having an economical impact;
• the people with the organization;
• the people that the organization interacts with;
• the assets and equipment;
• the environment and many more.

And now a more complete definition about the hazard would be:

Hazard is anything that can cause harm to people, the organization, the environment, the assets.

This is important because according to the aforementioned categories we can customize the risk index table description by giving exact definitions about the severity.

Risk index table as reference, not be used

It is a fact that we are not free of hazards, and we live and operate with plenty of them, and is also true that we cannot eliminate them all. Some of them are already managed by the regulation, training, procedures, manuals, etc. Some of them on the other hand are not.

What does a hazard wait? It waits for a triggering event to escalate into an unwanted consequence (incident, accident or just an unwanted event).

How can we identify hazards?

Hazards can be identified by many methods, some of them are presented below:

• Failure modes and effects analysis;
• Structured what-if;
• Dynamic models;
• FAST method;
• brainstorming;
• safety reporting;
• internal investigations;
• trend analysis of occurrences;
• trend analysis of SPIs;
• feedback from training;

• results from surveys;
• checklists;
• audits;
• findings;
• inspections;
• analysis of investigation reports;
• information exchange;
• change management;
• flight data monitoring;
• information from newsletters

Some of the tools that quality personnel are already familiar can even be used when studying a safety case in order to identify hazards, such as the SHELL model or the Fishbone diagram.

Each method has its own advantages and disadvantages and they mostly relay on the maturity of the SMS and the willingness of the management and people to actually implement the safety processes.

The primary question that can be used when conducting hazard identification is:

What elements, in isolation or combination, may have contributed or could contribute to an incident or accident?

There may seem as a lot of information only for one element of the risk assessment, but the truth is that hazard identification is done mechanically like shifting gears in the car.

Hazard identification is a continuous approach to the day-to-day business and operations (even in our daily life). As we have already mentioned in another article safety management's goal is to manage hazards proactively. This means that we do not wait for a hazard to escalate into a consequence and from that consequence to identify the underlying hazard. We aim to capture the hazards before their effects become evident.

Similarly to all procedures, the hazard identification process should be documented, this means that the hazards even not been analyzed (risk assessment) yet, should be documented. Also, we should keep a track of all the known hazards (or risk cases- a risk case might include more than one hazard).

Hazard Types

A hazard might be:

1. Visible
   We can see it, smell it, hear it, taste it, feel it. These are the obvious hazards.
   Examples: taxiway obstructions, overheated tyre, rough engine
2. Hidden
   These hazards are not easily detected.
   Examples: electricity, radiation, inadequate training, stress, altitude, early stages of fatigue
3. Emerging
   These hazards might seem minor at first and may not receive the required attention, and in the future they might become worse and cause great damage.
   Examples: a small oil leak, a small dent in the main rotor blade

Real Life Example

Now lets approach the hazard identification from our everyday life. This is also the part of the safety training that I keen on doing, I don't like aviation examples. Safety trainers around the world beware, many times people are forced to attend our trainings because "Safety is the top priority here" or "The regulation says to attend a safety training every 2 years", so approaching safety from a theoretical perspective makes us (and safety) boring.

An important element of hazard identification is the level of detail of each hazard. For example:

driving - driving to work - driving to school with the kids on board - driving a truck without truck's driver licence - driving my friend's car after a party.

All of the above are hazards.

Driving: this is a general hazard and it is impossible to assess it. Driving from where to where, driving what car, do you carry any cargo? If you are able to answer these questions then you most probably defined the hazard correctly.

The other cases are more defined and can be assessed, maybe some more detail could be added to the description of each hazard.

For example "driving for work". We can leave the hazard as it is but we could add a short description where we would what car or cars are we driving, are we alone in the car, do we do any stops, when we start working, etc.

I done that because if something changes to the details of the hazards, then the assessment would probably change.

Aviation Example

Now it is time for an aviation example.

Consider an airline that serves to its customers water in glass bottles. The glass bottles are served by the cabin crew.

Let's do a hazard identification to that case. A possible hazard is: "glass bottles in the cabin, served by the cabin crew".

This is actually a hazard because as we said before, a hazard only waits for a triggering event to escalate into an unwanted event.

A turbulence might cause some bottles to fall off and broke, a cabin crew might try to pick the broken bottles, and finally cut his/her finger (this is the consequence).

If we are in the proactive side of hazard identification, some people that have already faced a similar unwanted situation in the past, might report that hazard to our organization, or the hazard might be identified just by reading this article. This is the input.

But if the airline has not yet captured that hazard, then sometime in the future, a cabin crew member or a passenger might cut his/her finger. Then a safety report should be filled by the interested party (pilot, cabin crew, etc.) and this report would be the input for the hazard identification, where the glass bottle would be characterized as a hazard. In that scenario, the organization is in the reactive side of safety.

It is not required to eliminate the hazard at all cases. Maybe the airline would decide to continue serving glass bottles of water because of the rarity of that events and equip the cabin crew with safety gloves in case that a bottle breaks. Or maybe the airline would decide to eliminate the hazard and serve water in plastic bottles.

Do you have other ideas? Leave a reply at the end of this article.

Risk Assessment- General

Now what are the next steps after the hazard identification?

We have to simply answer the following questions:

1. What are the consequences of the hazard?
2. What are the mitigating actions that are currently in place?
3. What is the probability of each consequence (with the existing mitigating actions)?
4. How severe would be each consequence (with the existing mitigating actions)?
5. What is the tolerability of the hazard?
6. Is it required to take any additional mitigations?
7. If yes, what are those additional actions?
8. What is the projected probability and severity of the consequence?
9. What is the projected tolerability of the consequence if those actions are implemented?
10. When the mitigating actions are implemented, what is the final probability and severity of the consequence?
11. What is the final tolerability of the consequence?

It may seem that there are a lot of questions that have to be answered, but don't worry, as soon as you define a structured process for the risk assessment, all steps are done almost automatically.

This article was first appeared here.