The Concepts of Risk, Safety, and Security: A Fundamental Exploration and Understanding of Similarities and Differences

When discussing the concepts of risk, safety, and security, people have an intuitive understanding of what these concepts mean and to a certain level, this understanding is universal. However, when delving into the meaning of the words and concepts in order to fully understand all their aspects, one is likely to fall into a semantic debate...

An ontological and semantic foundation for safety science

This article proposes an ontological and semantic foundation for safety science, based on an etymological and etiological study of the concepts of risk and safety. The awareness regarding the concepts of safety and risk have both evolved in similar ways because of increasingly more demanding situations and events that impact society in an...

Total Respect Management: (TR³M) : a systemic management approach in aligning organisations towards performance, safety and CSR

Achieving Organisational Alignment, Safety and Sustainable Performance in Organisations

When looking at socio-technical systems from a systems thinking and systemic perspective, it becomes clear that mental models govern the behaviours and determine the achievements of socio-technical systems. This is also the case for individuals, being systems themselves and, as such, being elements of those socio-technical systems. Individual...

Safety science, a systems thinking perspective: From events to mental models and sustainable safety

In the past one hundred years, concepts such as risk, safety and security have become ever more important and they represent a growing concern in our society. These concepts are also important subjects of study to enhance sustainability. During the past fifty years, safety science has gradually developed as an independent field of science. In...

An ontological and semantic foundation for safety and security science

When discussing the concepts of risk, safety, and security, people have an intuitive understanding of what these concepts mean, and, to a certain level, this understanding is universal. However, when delving into the real meaning of these concepts, one is likely to fall into semantic debates and ontological discussions. In industrial parks,...

Measuring (un)safety. A broad understanding and definition of safety, allowing for instant measuring of unsafety

Industrial safety performance has, for a long time, been the domain of health and safety specialists, measuring injury and absenteeism rates to discover patterns and trying to prevent accidents from happening. The drawback of this approach is that safety is reactive to accidents, mostly caused by operations. As a result, safety (performance)...