Madden Maritime is now the Maritime Safety Innovation Lab

Madden Maritime was founded as a personal website and writing project.  In the 9-1/2 years since it was founded, Madden Maritime has been a place for me to organize my thoughts, stash reference material and promulgate maritime safety and security information.

Over the past several years, my view of safety has been affected by “thought leaders” in the safety industry such as Sidney Dekker, Todd Conklin, Gary Klein, Ron Gantt and Erik Hollnagel.  The coronavirus pandemic allowed me ample time to dive deeper into Safety II or Safety Differently and investigate resilience engineering even further.

This research, along with past work on near miss reporting systems within the maritime industry has lead me to the realization that it is time for a change.

“Safety” in the maritime industry is derivative of the work of Herbert Heinrich in the 1930s as published in his “Industrial Accident Prevention – A Scientific Approach.  Unfortunately, this base and frequent “Drive to Zero” safety campaigns, which focus on the lagging indicators of lost time or injuries, have left maritime safety languishing in times past.  And people are still being injured or worse.

There’s a better way, though.  There HAS to be a better way.  Within the maritime industry, we have people at the vanguard of Safety II, such as Dr. Nippin Anand.  Our goal is now to attempt to bring work such as his and these theories to all.

We will do this by being a clearinghouse for all things safety in the maritime industry.  From best practices developed by mariners and P&I clubs, to near miss reporting and accident investigations and finally to research from within and without the maritime industry on the latest in safety theories and practice, we intend to be the place to go.

Founded 9-1/2 years ago, Madden Maritime will be phased out over the next year.  Moving forward we will be known as the Maritime Safety Innovation Lab (MSIL for short).  Yes, it is shameless imitation of the greats such as the Safety Science Innovation Lab at Griffiths University, but it is a lofty goal and one that we will achieve.

Welcome!