The Foundation for an Industrial Safety Culture

Objectives

The Fondation pour une Culture de Sécurité Industrielle (FonCSI) is a french research foundation, created in April 2005. It is a non-profit organization that funds research in the public interest. Its objectives are:

• to undertake and fund research activities that contribute to improving safety in hazardous organizations (industrial firms of all sizes, in all industrial sectors;)
• to work towards better mutual understanding between high-risk industries and civil society, aiming for a durable compromise and an open debate that covers all the dimensions of risk;
• to foster the acculturation of all stakeholders to the questions, tradeoffs and problems related to risk and safety.

In order to attain these objectives, the FonCSI works to bring together researchers from different scientific disciplines with other stakeholders concerned by industrial safety and the management of technological risk: companies, local government, trade unions, NGOs. We also attempt to build bridges between disciplines and to promote interaction and cross-pollination between engineering, sciences and the humanities.

Means

Half of FonCSI's funding comes from private donations (Arkema, EDF, Total and Sanofi-Aventis), with the remaining half being contributed by the French government. The FonCSI has a small staff based in Toulouse, in the south of France, allocating the majority of its budget to the funding of research (PhD theses, research collaboration contracts with universities and research laboratories). The FonCSI issues a Call for Proposals every two years:

• in 2004: the socio-cultural success factors for operational experience feedback and organizational learning activities;
• in 2006: arbitration between safety and other criteria (economic, legal, societal); human, organizational and technical vulnerabilities;
• in 2008: Risk, uncertainty and decision-making.

The FonCSI shares the objectives of the Institute for an Industrial Safety Culture (ICSI), and works in close collaboration with it. The two organizations are located in the same buildings, but are separate legal entities with distinct budgets.

Scientific advisory board

The FonCSI has a scientific advisory board, which advises the Scientific Director and the Director. The members of the advisory board are listed hereunder.