A methodology for a quantitative assessment of safety culture in NPPs based on Bayesian networks

Highlights: • A safety culture framework and a quantitative methodology to assess safety culture were proposed. • The relation among Norm system, Safety Management System and worker's awareness was established. • Safety culture probability at NPPs was updated by collecting actual organizational data. • Vulnerable areas and the relationship between safety culture and human error were confirmed. - Abstract: For a long time, safety has been recognized as a top priority in high-reliability industries such as aviation and nuclear power plants (NPPs). Establishing a safety culture requires a number of actions to enhance safety, one of which is changing the safety culture awareness of workers. The concept of safety culture in the nuclear power domain was established in the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safety series, wherein the importance of employee attitudes for maintaining organizational safety was emphasized. Safety culture assessment is a critical step in the process of enhancing safety culture. In this respect, assessment is focused on measuring the level of safety culture in an organization, and improving any weakness in the organization. However, many continue to think that the concept of safety culture is abstract and unclear. In addition, the results of safety culture assessments are mostly subjective and qualitative. Given the current situation, this paper suggests a quantitative methodology for safety culture assessments based on a Bayesian network. A proposed safety culture framework for NPPs would include the following: (1) a norm system, (2) a safety management system, (3) safety culture awareness of worker, and (4) Worker behavior. The level of safety culture awareness of workers at NPPs was reasoned through the proposed methodology. Then, areas of the organization that were vulnerable in terms of safety culture were derived by analyzing observational evidence. We also confirmed that the frequency of events involving human error decreases when the level of safety culture is high. It is anticipated that the causality between the safety culture awareness of worker and the state of safety at NPPs can be verified using the proposed methodology.