Making sports tourism and recreation sustainable through the enhancement of accidentology in risk environments : the insight provided by experience feedback methods applied to near-miss sequences in mountain sports and aquatic safety
Résumé
The risk of severe and frequent injuries associated with active pursuits in mountain areas and aquatic environment is acknowledged. Fatalities also occur in such settings, mostly through drownings, falls, or avalanche burials, for example. In France, the knowledge of such accident facts and causes seems perfectible. The first part of this presentation, rooted in the social construction of risks and based on 80 interviews, will consist of an analysis of this pessimistic statement: corporative, institutional, methodological and judicial stakes lead to a fragmented picture of accidentology and to the poor availability of data in the field of hazardous environments recreation and tourism. The second part of the communication will investigate the perspectives offered by the study of not only accidents, but also near-miss sequences. This dedramatized way to improve knowledge of accident sequences consists in grasping the preventive value of problematic situations, which could have escalated to an accident but where worse outcomes have been avoided. Moreover, incidents, much more frequent than accidents, provide a greater pool of data to comprehend accidentology from. An international overview of existing accident and near-miss reporting systems will be presented. Although they provide interesting insights, most of them lack detailed information on the situations to enable thorough analysis of the data, and thus prevention improvement. We created our own comprehensive accident and incident reporting system to allow in-depth, multi-factors and system-based analysis of reports in mountainous environment and public swimming pools. Regarding mountain recreation, this applied research constitutes, in itself, a social innovation, since it currently resulted in the implementation of an online, open-access, participative platform enhancing the preventive use of gathered experience feedbacks. This process will be described in sociological terms, through such concepts as network dynamics, compromises, enrolment, and appropriation. The topic tackled in this presentation seems all the most relevant that tourism and recreation in aquatic and mountainous settings must rely on efficient risk analysis and risk management methods.