About This Project

Ask the Scientists

What is the context of this research?

My Background

I am passionate about making sport SCUBA diving safer and wanted to take my experience and knowledge from military aviation and apply it to sport diving in both developing a Just Culture and improved reporting of diving incidents to achieve this. To that end, I started a part-time personally self-funded PhD at Cranfield University to make it happen with the aim of delivering my thesis in the winter of 2015.

Background to the Research Project

EVERYONE MAKES MISTAKES! Sounds obvious but to solve a problem we first need to identify what that problem is. The aim of this research is to use existing methods which have developed in environments such as aviation, medicine and petro-chemical plants, but modified for the recreational nature of SCUBA diving, to identify the main causality factors in recreational and technical SCUBA diving so that individuals can change their behaviours, and training agencies can modify their training programmes if required.

The majority of diving incident analysis focusses on outcomes rather the mistakes that the diver has made, and with the exception of a very few examples, there is no examination of the roles of supervisory or organisational constructs and how they influence the development, propagation and execution of activities leading to incidents by an individual diver. This lack of attention may be because of the diverse nature of training where a multitude of courses are provided by tens of different commercial agencies employing thousands of instructors rather than one common pathway mandated by an overseeing authority. There is considerable evidence that a system-based approach is required to take into account the parallel and serial nature of incident development

The research has developed from conceptual models to one, based on an aviation-centric model, called the Human Factors Analysis and Classification System - Diving (HFACS-D). This model has been validated using Subject Matter Experts in the diving industry against a number of scenarios to ensure that each factor is relevant.



It was recognised that to get the most from such a model and be adopted across the community, from diver to researcher, the model should be able to cover ‘simple lessons learned’ for the lay-diver and provide robust and consistent analysis opportunities for the research community across the globe.

This research has been personally funded because the regulatory authorities are not interested as this is a recreational activity and the training agencies are suspicious of the outcomes in that it might mean more oversight than is currently in place, with commensurate increases in running costs in what is already a challenging commercial market.

What is the significance of this project?

I believe that this project is very significant because it addresses a shortfall in the current risk management process - the determination of the risk when undertaking SCUBA diving and how poor error management is managed at both the personal and corporate level within this recreational activity.

Contrary to existing environments e.g. medicine, aviation, petrol-chemical plants etc, where safety is addressed effectively through organisational and supervisory structures, recreational SCUBA is a discretionary activity where the easiest risk mitigation is not to dive! Due to its recreational nature, there is almost no oversight at the personal level and at the organisational level there is limited oversight by the training organisations.

In a sport which is marketed as accessible to all, those who undertake the activity need to understand where they are likely to make mistakes in the future and protect against them through behaviour and cultural changes. Furthermore, training agencies and organisations need to determine which areas in the training materials may be lacking when emphasising the risks which will be encountered when they go diving in the 'real world' when they don't have the safety net of a Divemaster/Guide/Instructor.

However, the answer will not more legislation or rules which will reduce personal freedom! There is enough information out there to show those who undertaken recreational or technical SCUBA diving what might go wrong if they do not follow the protocols/guidelines/recommendations delivered during their training programmes; what isn't available is the scale of the problem and how likely something 'bad' will happen.

In essence, the outcomes of this research programme are unlikely to be earth shattering when it comes to novelty. However, it will be the first time that this research has been undertaken against an activity which is discretionary in nature and where there is limited oversight therefore there is likely to be considerable read-across to other risky discretionary sports or activities.

Fundamentally, divers go diving to have fun. Developing something which means that there is so much red tape that the industry dies is not the aim, but rather the scale of the problem can be determined so that divers can make more informed choices.

What are the goals of the project?

1. Determine the distribution of the 100 causality factors which have been developed as part of the research model which looks at the role of Human Factors in SCUBA diving incidents, using a 1000-respondent survey.

2. Conduct analysis of this captured data to determine likely linkages/biases between experience, type of diving, age, gender and depths dived to identify specific risk areas to target mitigation efforts effectively.

3. Undertake a study to determine the top 20% most influential factors which exist at the organisation and supervisory layers within the research model, which may lead a diver to make mistakes once they are outside the auspices of a supervised diving activity.

4. Once those 20% factors have been determined, undertake a survey to determine why the errors were made by a sample population.

Deliver the results from the above in a manner which informs the wider recreational audience and ensures that the analysis is not kept inside the academic community.