U.S. DOE Safety Knowledge Base: Its Integration and Utilization

Abstract

The evolution of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Environmental, Safety and Health (ES&H) information database has tracked the development and growth of personal computers and intra/inter-net capabilities. The scope and applicability of this database, which is primarily electronic, includes DOE's nuclear materials operations and is extremely broad, ranging from ES&H policy/safety initiatives/requirements (Orders) /standards and guides to the recording and analysis of events/accidents and sharing of lessons learned. Much of this information is available to the world via the Internet. Where pertinent, special effort has been made to link to other U.S. government agency ES&H databases. Certain DOE databases (typically preliminary and /or classified) are retained on intranets for appropriate timely access by DOE employees, contractors and/or oversight organizations. Select access to this ES&H database by Minatom could accelerate and enhance the mutual understanding of U.S. and Russian Federation safety cultures. The sharing of lessons learned through the exchange of ES&H databases could result in improvements to both safety cultures. Representative DOE ES&H search engines, database, and build-in analysis capabilities have been surveyed to provide limited ``examples{''} to establish an appreciation for the capabilities and limitations inherent in DOE's major ES&H databases: the Occurrence Reporting and Processing System (ORPS), along with Defense Program's derivative binned information trending tool (DP/ORBITT); the Computerized Accident Incident Reporting System (CAIRS); the Medical Surveillance Program; Performance Measures (PM); and the Lessons Learned (LL) Program. These and other DOE ES&H databases (along with built-in analytical aids) can be overwhelming to the first time user. Each database is specially structured/indexed to facilitate tailored applications, i.e., searching and manipulation within the database proper. Such features present compatibility problems in the consolidation of databases and/or during cross-cut comparisons. Some databases have a ``life of their own{''} because of organizational ``stove piping.{''} Typically, time-based trending analysis of types of adverse events/causative factors is too general to identify cause and effect relationships. Without the development of normalized measurements, changes in mission and/or work load affect safety performance far more than do changes associated with the quality of safety management. The use of advanced search engines for unstructured databases to address these deficiencies and to provide the requisite flexibility in dealing with different and changing applications across DOE's ES&H database is under development.