Visualizing Cumulative Risk Across Work Contexts

How can we represent the risk that emerges when multiple processes interact? This research considers how safety incident information can be visualized using a narrative modeling method that represents the accumulation of effects through different contexts. Currently, organizations conceptualize safety incidents in terms of the formats in which they are classified - assets, roles, cost and deviations from procedures. However, some accidents should also be understood in terms of accumulation and context. An example is presented in which a reversing vehicle caused a fatal injury because safety modifications made for one work location actually reduced safety in another. This paper explores the inclusion of cumulative and contextual information in a workplace safety scenario by presenting it in a narrative modeling visualization. Animated examples will be shown in the presentation; this paper provides still images of those visualizations and links to the animations. The aim is to develop foundations for a formal approach that reveals how interventions can have a ripple effect across a distributed and dynamic system. A long-term goal is to develop an analytical modeling tool that tracks how influence promulgates through complex heterogenous systems, such as collaborative human-machine teams.