Dr Ioannis M. Dokas
Summary: This project looked at developing early warnings systems for safety issues in drinking water plants
On January 2008, the Irish Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) funded, under the DERP grant scheme, the research project "Supporting the Concept of Early Warning Analysis" (SCEWA). This project emerged from the need to study and address one real-world problem and one research problem. The real-world problem stemmed from the need for organisations to be proactive to accidents and failures in complex sociotechnical systems. The research problem originated from the multiple facets, which the early warning sign concept receives in the relevant literature. This, in turn, created the need to: a) Study various opinions and perspectives on the early warning sign concept; b) Deliver novel approaches for the identification and justification of early warning signs to accidents; c) Design and develop tools that support organisations to be proactive to accidents.
The ultimate goal of the SCEWA project was to support organisations and state agencies in providing early warning services to accidents and failures. Setting such a goal was quite challenging when the project begun because the study of early warnings at that time had not attracted the attention of many researchers, as it has today.
https://www.epa.ie/media/epa-2020/publications/research/STRIVE_125_thumb[1].jpg