Learning from Weak Signals: the design of SECA (Structured Exploration of Complex Adaptions) in the Air Traffic Management domain

Understanding the nuances of everyday work requires an in-depth exploration of system properties and the combination of multiple perspectives from different operators. Especially in large-scale organizations, knowledge at organizational level should be obtained through a collaborative construct of shared processes and experiences, which would have been stored otherwise separately in individuals’ minds. This consciousness, strengthened by precepts on tacit and explicit knowledge from organizational theory, served as a common ground for the Weak Signals project, coordinated by EUROCONTROL, and involving two Air Navigation Service Providers: the German DFS and the Danish NAVIAIR. Weak Signals is indeed meant to empower system analysts through information on actual work practices. One of the outputs of the project is a novel questions-based technique, named SECA (Structured Exploration of Complex Adaptions), which took inspirations from other process analyses methods such as SCAD, Systemic Contributors and Adaptation Diagramming or RAG, Resilience Analysis Grid. SECA workflow encompasses four macro sections besides the description of a situation: response in action, experience, pressures, goal conflicts. The data obtained from SECA interviews can be then coded and analysed systematically from a semantical point of view in order to generate and aggregate content from different respondents across multiple work process. The workflow has been developed and tested in the air traffic management domain, relying over 70 SECA interviews in two Air Navigation Service Providers. This work is expected to contribute to the Safety-II workshop as follows: - explaining the foundation of SECA for identifying weak signals within an organization - sharing an overview of the technique and its expected results - discussing challenges and benefits from SECA application, as for the experience of two large organizations - present and emerging Safety Thinking technique.