Revisiting safety science to better address the new challenges in industrial safety
Abstract
Safety science is not an old science. It is a rather new field of research built over the past 30 to 40 years, in the 70s and 80s. This field is based on the contributions of a great diversity of scientific disciplines including engineering, mathematics, sociology, ergonomics, management, etc (Le Coze, Pettersen, Reiman, 2014). The emergence of this field was attested by the creation of a number of journals (e.g., Safety Science, Journal of risk research, Reliability engineering and System Safety, etc, see Hale, 2014 for a presentation). And, a certain number of models have been produced in the past thirty years which contributed to offer a way of conceptualising the problem of safety in high risk systems and beyond. Perhaps some of the most visible models are the graphical contributions of Charles Perrow, James Reason or Jens Rasmussen revealing specific ways of framing safety issues among a diversity of options (Le Coze, 2013, 2014, Reiman, Rollenhangen, 2011). These were produced in the 80s and 90s. But where are we now? What are the new challenges? What happened in between? Coming back on recent accidents (e.g. Fukushima, Deep Water Horizon) and the new context in which they unfold (e.g. globalization, ecological concerns, new technological developments), this presentation will, modestly, sketch a landscape of challenges for the field of industrial safety.