Using simulation of accidents to assess resilience capacities of organizations

Available on: http://www.resilience-engineering.org/REPapers/Wybo_et_al.pdfInternational audienceThis paper deals with the organization of simulation exercises to train organizations to face emergencies. The original objective of simulations is to train people to emergency procedures and devices; we raise the question of training people to face potential crisis situations: are simulations fitted to that objective? Through the observation of a number of exercises by private companies and rescue services, we can answer that naïve interpretation of simulation results limits their benefits to the correction of gaps between prescribed and observed actions, without addressing complex organizational behavior. We introduce a method to organize simulations that gives access to this complexity and to the resilience capacities of the organization by giving specific roles to observers. This method uses a model of the organization seen as a combination of structures, relations and meaning