Foundations of Safety Science

by Sidney Dekker

How are today’s ‘hearts and minds’ programs linked to a late-19th century definition of human factors as people’s moral and mental deficits? What do Heinrich’s ‘unsafe acts’ from the 1930’s have in common with the Swiss cheese model of the early 1990’s? Why was the reinvention of human factors in the 1940’s such an important event in the development of safety thinking? What makes many of our current systems so complex and impervious to Tayloristic safety interventions? ‘Foundations of Safety Science’ covers the origins of major schools of safety thinking, and traces the heritage and interlinkages of the ideas that make up safety science today. Features

Genres: Engineering

468 pages, Hardcover

Published April 16, 2019

About the author

Sidney W. A. Dekker (born 1969, "near Amsterdam"),is a Professor at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia, where he founded the Safety Science Innovation Lab. He is also Honorary Professor of Psychology at the University of Queensland.

Previously, Dekker was Professor of human factors and system safety at Lund University in Sweden,where he founded the Leonardo da Vinci Laboratory for Complexity and Systems Thinking, and flew as First Officer on Boeing 737s for Sterling and later Cimber Airlines out of Copenhagen. Dekker is a high-profile scholar and is known for his work in the fields of human factors and safety.

Reviews

[Shaun Hetherington · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great introduction to safety science, from its foundations during the industrial revolution to the theories of resilience engineering taking shape in todays industry.

On reflection, I don't think this book is for the lay person. It's text heavy and the writing is sporadic - sometimes whole chapters are hard to get through because of the complexity of the language, whilst others are easier to understand. I had to skip a few of the case studies as I just couldn't comprehend what I was reading.

What I did like, was how thought-provoking the narrative was. Before reading this I would never have realised that the Heinrich and Bird theories of accidents and incidents were as old and outdated as they are, considering that institutes like NEBOSH still regurgitate them as gospel nowadays. What I found I was doing between chapters was making notes on areas I agreed with and wanted to explore more. Indeed, there are important lessons to take away from each era of safety, and there is no truly correct way of doing it, instead it is up to us to take concepts and practice them. Which is exactly what I will be doing in my organisation - particularly the lessons from Barry Turner, Rasmussen and Woods & Hollnagel from the 70s to 00s which include the drift into failure and resilience engineering models.

I've heard that Dekker's new book on doing safety differently from last year is more aimed at the lay person, so I will probably pick that up as an obvious next step, and I've also got notes from Hollnagel to explore on resilience engineering and "safety-II". Overall, thought-provoking and useful for anyone in the OSH profession or wanting to get into it.

[Emanuele Gemelli · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a complex book, since the matter treated is complex like any story of any social science. This is a book to keep on the desk for any safety practitioner, full of notes and ideas to test, to verify. There is a hint of bias of the author, since he is one the scholars deeply involved with Resilience Engineering (I.e. the most recent school in safety), however, he is not shy underlining the RE potential issues. Five stars, because it is a must read

[Jolien Buelens · Rating 3 out of 5]

Had to read this for my degree. Dekker is often too verbose as well as ideologically pushy. Interesting but at times frustrating read due to the aforementioned issues.