Science of Safety

Broad, interdisciplinary coverage of literature related to the science of safety a relatively new field devoted to identifying, evaluating, and eliminating or controlling hazards. Major subject categories are general safety, industrial and occu-... 

Step 2 Educating all members of the staff regarding the science of safety, so they understand better the reason that change is essential and the importance of their active participation in the program. 

Accountability cannot be exercised only after the fact. The work of accountability is to inculcate the science of safety and the operating practices of high-reliability organizations into disciplined performance in health care. 

Wears, R. The Science of Safety. In L. A. Zipperer and S. Cushman (eds.), Lessons in Patient Se ety. Chicago National Patient Safety Foundation, 2001. 

The goals of this practical guide are to teach the science of safety, introduce the lessons that other high risk industries can teach us, present ways to learn from health care s failures and successes, and examine the growing body of better practices and achievable, effective initiatives that can help transform the concepts of patient safety into action. 

Wu, C. 2007. Initial study of the science of safety sdcnce. China Safety Science Journal 17(11) 5U5. 

The Sentinel Initiative, the Science of Safety, and Mini-Sentinel... 

The ultimate goal of the science of safety is to hold to an absolute minimum any damaging effects from handling modern technology, or, at least, to keep them within tolerable limits. In the above context, damaging effects may mean accidents caused by technology as well as other destruction or loss, e.g., through environmental pollution caused by a technical installation. 

As far as life, health, property, or ideal values e.g., the beauty of nature) are endangered by undesirable side effects of technology, avoiding such damage as far as possible is a task dictated by ethical considerations. In many cases, however, it will be realistic economical considerations which prompt us to aspire to the same goal. It is certainly not within the province of the science of safety to engage in moralizing about the relative merits of duty and inclination however, it is necessary to point out that in many cases personal interest and ethical considerations may often coincide. 

The peculiar function of the science of safety in achieving this aim is the acquisition and summarization of knowledge regarding the conditions and design of safety in handling technical systems, as well as regarding the various possibilities of protection from their inherent dangers and to... 

In accordance with the understanding that the science of safety, besides concerning itself with accident-like occurrence, should also concern itself with chronic occurrences of damage, the initial concepts of damage and danger have been selected in such a way that they will encompass both. Also, the word occurrence is not meant to convey the meaning of an isolated happening of relatively short duration it simply expresses a certain event for which the expected frequency should be noted. 

In order to utilize the cybernetic approach for the science of safety, it would help if one would regard cybernetics as the general science of cybernetic systems. Its tasks and goals within the meaning of this treatise can be described as follows ... 

A first approach of cybernetics to the safety complex of a technical system is the frequent utilization of control circuits in order to keep the behavior of a machine on a predetermined path. The selection of the technical methods meant to achieve safety is the task of safety engineering and not the science of safety. The latter has a far greater scope. 

The interlinking of cybernetics and the science of safety results from the fact that technical installations are operated and monitored by human beings who are involved within the effective range of that same installation. They are using the machine but are likewise exposed to its dangers. Human behavior as well as the behavior of the machine, on the other hand, are dependent on the conditions of their environment. The environment, in turn, is often influenced by them in various ways, e.g., by the production of waste, sewage, noise, and alien substances into the air. Man, on the other hand, is able to influence these environmental factors. Each and every technical installation is thus embedded in a man-machine-environment-system characterized by mutual interaction (Figure 3.12). 

Within the framework of the science of safety, the methods of system analysis which are especially important in systems engineering are those suited for the evaluation of all kinds of safety aspects, especially the frequency of incidents and their impact. These methods will be described later in their capacity of working tools. At this point we will discuss their methodological basis and the limits of their application. 

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