ABSTRACT
Safety culture can be defined as a set of shared beliefs and values about being protected from danger. Safety culture is a phrasewhich grew out of the nuclear industry following an International Atomic Energy Authority report on the Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine in 1986. Since that time, it has been adopted bymany industries, including air traffic management (ATM) and the wider aviation environment, as well as oil and gas, defence, railway. Safety culture focuses on attitudes and beliefs and the extent to which beliefs about safety permeate an organisation from top to bottom. These ‘soft’ phenomena are often difficult to grasp amongst the ‘harder’ engineering disciplines and are often taken for granted, but they exhibit a very strong influence on safe behaviours of staff and contractors.
