Living with the New Safety Landscape I

This open access brief-in-two-volumes provides a global overview of the many ways in which today's safety management and governance of high-risk industries may be destabilized in an evolving and rapidly transforming world. Rather than focusing exclusively on the traditional perimeter of safety management and governance, it considers industrial safety within a wider societal, technological, (geo)political, economic and environmental context to explore future challenges in the coupling of safety and its ecosystem and how to live with them. This first volume analyzes the current situation as well as the destabilizations now underway and predicted to come in the future and suggests new frames of reference for this changing world, including: the social contract, AI realism and the regulatory framework. The second volume focuses on challenges at the organizational level before providing illustrations of ways forward implemented in various areas. In considering the complexity and uncertainty of the topic, the two volumes together rely on the principle of requisite variety to provide contrasting and complementary views by gathering insights on the future of safety from many international academics.