Safety Investigation Philosophy

The Marine Safety Investigation Unit implements the common EU philosophy for maritime safety investigations, promoting the adoption of a systemic perspective during the safety investigation process as the sole approach, which supports the abandoning of blame / liability bias and counterfactual reasoning:

The philosophy underpins the notion that maritime organisations are open systems and therefore the successful outcome of their activities depends on a continuous interface with the context in which they operate.  The individual parts that constitute the organisations are also interacting continuously in a non-linear manner.

These extrinsic and intrinsic activities are complex by nature and are influenced by how the involved actors experience reality.  Moreover, the local and technical circumstances unfolding immediately prior to the maritime casualty or incident, cannot be isolated from preceding organisational events and circumstances; rather, this is what constitutes a holistic, complex system.

Although maritime organisations are open to the context in which they operate, they do so within established operational envelopes, e.g., financial and safety boundaries, in the absence of which, they will neither be sustainable, nor able to survive.