Once safety is involved, there seems to be an irresistible push towards more norms, procedures and processes, whatever the context. This book is not a plea against proceduralization, but it does take ...the view that it is time to reassess how far it can still go and to what benefit. There is a growing suspicion that the path taken might in fact lead to a dead end, unless the concept of procedure and the conditions under which procedures develop are revisited.
This open access book directs attention to the safety implications of disruptive, sustainability-driven changes in sociotechnical systems resulting from climate-change considerations in high-risk ...industries. It addresses not only the dismantling of currently prevalent systems and structures and the achievement of a stable future state but also the management of processes for establishing new practices in a safe and reliable manner without undue interruption of important functions and services. Leading scholars from various fields of research have contributed to this brief by analyzing case studies as well as through conceptual and methodological work. They propose strategies for coping with new kinds of risk at local and organizational levels. The oil and gas and nuclear industries are two cases investigated here. They present a challenging mixture of continuity and disruption and require strategies for coping with safety and sustainability issues at the same time. Innovativemethods such as real-world experimentation and computer-based simulation are discussed as means of investigating the issues at stake. Climate Change and Safety in High-Risk Industries brings together critical appraisals of the challenges that will be faced by industry, regulatory bodies and decision-makers in coming decades. It analyzes whether safety and sustainability are accurately thought of as competing imperatives or, rather, offer possibilities for a more cooperative approach to the necessary adaptations in our modes of production and consumption.
This open access book explores the synergies and tensions between safety and security management from a variety of perspectives and by combining input from numerous disciplines. It defines the ...concepts of safety and security, and discusses the methodological, organizational and institutional implications that accompany approaching them as separate entities and combining them, respectively.The book explores the coupling of safety and security from different perspectives, especially: the concepts and methods of risk, safety and security; the managerial aspects; user experiences in connection with safety and security. Given its scope, the book will be of interest to researchers and practitioners in the fields of safety and security, and to anyone working at a business or in an industry concerned with how safety and security should be managed.
A number of key concepts have punctuated the development of Safety science. Reflecting on what the next ones could be is a tricky exercise. How come certain safety concepts or theories or dispositive ...in the sense of Foucault emerge and become 'dominating concepts' or turning points in safety science? The paper considers a case from the past, namely that of Safety Management System (SMS), as a proxy to shed light on this question. The origins of SMS are explored to unravel what lies behind its emergence and development. The research is based on a literature review and open-ended interviews of 15 people who played a personal part in safety science or practices development before and/or when SMS started to emerge. Overall, the sample of interviewees represents a range of safety stakeholders (academia, industry, regulatory bodies, consulting companies) and high-risk industries to provide a diversity of perspectives on the emergence of SMS. The analysis of this material highlights several aspects that contributed to converge towards an approach like the SMS, beyond the identified limitations of safety science at that time. First, the intellectual context in which SMS emerged, was that of major developments on organizational and managerial dimensions of safety. Second, most safety stakeholders had motivations beyond safety enhancement to move towards a new approach. Last, the overall environment, way beyond safety and high-risk industries, facilitated the convergence towards an approach like the SMS. Eventually, this research demonstrates that safety is a situated science, situated not only in time, but also in a much wider economic, industrial, political, societal context. Putting safety into such perspective opens new avenues for reflecting about the future of safety science considering current trends not only in safety but also way beyond.
•The SMS crystallizes the knowledge, needs, expectations and trends of a certain society at a certain point in time.•The motivations of safety stakeholders to change safety approaches were ...manifold.•The overall context contributed to shaping the SMS as the new safety dispositive.•Safety is a situated science.•It is situated in time but also in a technological, political, economic and social context.
A number of key concepts have punctuated the development of Safety science. Reflecting on what the next ones could be is a tricky exercise. How come certain safety concepts or theories or dispositive in the sense of Foucault emerge and become ‘dominating concepts’ or turning points in safety science? The paper considers a case from the past, namely that of Safety Management System (SMS), as a proxy to shed light on this question. The origins of SMS are explored to unravel what lies behind its emergence and development. The research is based on a literature review and open-ended interviews of 15 people who played a personal part in safety science or practices development before and/or when SMS started to emerge. Overall, the sample of interviewees represents a range of safety stakeholders (academia, industry, regulatory bodies, consulting companies) and high-risk industries to provide a diversity of perspectives on the emergence of SMS. The analysis of this material highlights several aspects that contributed to converge towards an approach like the SMS, beyond the identified limitations of safety science at that time. First, the intellectual context in which SMS emerged, was that of major developments on organizational and managerial dimensions of safety. Second, most safety stakeholders had motivations beyond safety enhancement to move towards a new approach. Last, the overall environment, way beyond safety and high-risk industries, facilitated the convergence towards an approach like the SMS. Eventually, this research demonstrates that safety is a situated science, situated not only in time, but also in a much wider economic, industrial, political, societal context. Putting safety into such perspective opens new avenues for reflecting about the future of safety science considering current trends not only in safety but also way beyond.
This open access book addresses the future of work and industry by 2040—a core interest for many disciplines inspiring a strong momentum for employment and training within the industrial world. The ...future of industrial safety in terms of technological risk-management, although of obvious concern to international actors in various industries, has been quite sparsely addressed. This brief reflects the viewpoints of experts who come from different academic disciplines and various sectors such as oil and gas, energy, transportation, and the digital and even the military worlds, as expressed in debates and discussions during a two-day international seminar. The contributors address such questions as: What influence will ageing and lack of digital skills in the workforce of the occidental world have on safety culture? What are the likely impacts of big data, artificial intelligence and autonomous technologies on decision-making, and on the roles and responsibilities of individual actors and whole organizations? What role have human beings in a world of accelerating changes? What effects will societal concerns and the entrance of new players have on technological risk management and governance? Managing Future Challenges for Safety will interest and influence researchers considering the future effects of a number of currently developing technologies and their practitioner counterparts working in industry and regulation.
The conventional approach to risk communication, based on a centralized and controlled model, has led to blatant failures in the management of recent safety related events. In parallel, several cases ...have proved that actors not thought of as risk governance or safety management contributors may play a positive role regarding safety. Building on these two observations and bridging the gap between risk communication and safety practices leads to a new, more societal perspective on risk communication, that allows for smart risk governance and safety management. This book is Open Access under a CC-BY licence.
This open access book addresses several questions regarding the implementation of human and organisational factors (HOF) so that recent improvements in industrial safety can be built upon. It ...addresses sources of frustration in senior management with high expectations of operational recommendations and disquiet on the part of HOF specialists struggling to have an impact on high-level decision making. The brief explores these issues with an emphasis on examples and lessons learned based on the experience of its authors, who come from different academic disciplines and various industrial sectors such as oil and gas, energy and transportation. It then offers some ways forward for a better consideration of HOF in hazardous companies with a view of promoting safety and facing challenges in a rapidly changing world.
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