Risk Management for Diving Operations

This book provides clear information on how to manage diving-related risks. We will see that overlearning basic skills mitigates the impact of stress, and we will learn correct team-management procedures. Analytical tools like Fault Tree Analysis will be used to identify the root causes of diving incidents. Finally, we will understand how to develop safe and proficient diving plans. An extensive and detailed bibliography supports the material. The book provides the reader with a good deal of information about sources of errors, human factors and their impact on safety, the importance of good situational awareness, what characteristics make a good dive leader, how we should learn essential diving skills, what kind of stress, both physical and psychological, affects our performance, and what specific hazards derive from the different diving environments and the effect of diving on human physiology. The book is divided into 14 “standalone” chapters; each has a summary of its main contents at the beginning and a “lessons learned” section at the end. You can read the book cover-to-cover or only focus on the chapters related to your diving operations – the decision is yours. The biomedical aspects of diving have been reviewed by Brian Strickland, M.D., who completed his fellowship in wilderness medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and is currently a practicing emergency medicine physician. A series of appendixes complete the book. Here, the reader can find examples and templates of risk assessments that can be adapted to their specific diving situations. An analysis of the physics and mathematics behind the decompression models is also provided. If you are diving as part of your profession or simply because you love it, this reading will make you a safer and more confident diver.