Safety I-II, resilience and antifragility engineering: a debate explained through an accident occurring on a mobile elevating work platform

Int J Occup Saf Ergon. 2019 Mar;25(1):66-75. doi: 10.1080/10803548.2018.1444724. Epub 2018 Apr 24.

Abstract

Occupational health and safety (OHS) represents an important field of exploration for the research community: in spite of the growth of technological innovations, the increasing complexity of systems involves critical issues in terms of degradation of the safety levels. In such a situation, new safety management approaches are now mandatory in order to face the safety implications of the current technological evolutions. Along these lines, performing risk-based analysis alone seems not to be enough anymore. The evaluation of robustness, antifragility and resilience of a socio-technical system is now indispensable in order to face unforeseen events. This article will briefly introduce the topics of Safety I and Safety II, resilience engineering and antifragility engineering, explaining correlations, overlapping aspects and synergies. Secondly, the article will discuss the applications of those paradigms to a real accident, highlighting how they can challenge, stimulate and inspire research for improving OHS conditions.

Keywords: Safety I; Safety II; antifragility engineering; mobile elevating work platform; resilience engineering.

MeSH terms

  • Accident Prevention*
  • Accidents
  • Engineering / methods
  • Equipment Design*
  • Humans
  • Maintenance
  • Occupational Health*
  • Safety Management / methods*