(51a) Driving Black Swans Away Forever upon an Epistemological Map of Process Safety Cultural Communication - Human Factors Beyond Instrumental Rationality?

“Black swan” has been a statement, expression or concept of improbable, and in recent years referred to among chemical engineers (process safety professionals) as a catastrophic process safety accident.

In this paper, the author first introduces an epistemological map of Process Safety Cultural Communication (PSCC), then, upon the map, further explores the ethical, ontological and epistemological relationships between an expanded CCPS 1st Pillar, or namely Process Safety Formal Culture or Chemical Engineers’ 1st Amendment, and those rest 3 CCPS Pillars, attempting to shed light on why failure to Understand the Hazards & Risk (2nd Pillar), why failure to Manage Risk (3rd Pillar), why failure to Learn from Experience (4th Pillar), and, ultimately and optimistically, why black swans not only could be explainable and predictable but diagnosable and preventable, the last of which probably turns out to be the best emerging way to win the hearts and minds of all the employees of an organization and, more importantly, an ultimate solution to human factors.

Conclusion: chemical engineers (process safety professionals) should lead the stakeholders and regulators to overcome the epistemological barriers to substantially drive black swans away forever pursuing a future RBPS and new human factors beyond instrumental rationality.