Understanding hazards and risks: The need for a common operational picture

Many major hazards industries have come to rely on Safety Management Systems to resume responsibility for identifying, assessing and controlling their risks within acceptable levels of tolerance. This chapter considers the role of the Common Operational Picture (COP) as a model for anticipating risks and providing feedback on corrective actions. It presents earlier applications of the COP concept in emergency response planning where the incident command team can make better sense of the information scattered in different places. The chapter looks at different uses of the COP concept in supporting safety management across a range of situations at the strategic, system and technical levels. Safety management has traditionally focused on correcting safety concerns, problems or hazards and taking the necessary steps to bring the system back to normal operation. The chapter concludes with a discussion on the challenges of the application of the COP concept in major hazards industries.