Babette Fahlbruch – författare

Safety science is now well advanced in analysing risks and safety problems, but what appears to be missing is a better understanding of the methods and strategies which could help to close the gap between analysis and corrective action. Even in organizations such as nuclear plants where thorough and frequent analyses of safety-critical events occur and comprehensive reports are submitted to regulators or super-ordinate utility safety departments, these reports get filed away in a kind of data bank that resembles genuine event report cemeteries. Learning reaches a dead end here. The articles gathered in this collection address safety-oriented systems interventions and the various ways in which experience can be transferred and corrective measures applied to situations that warrant such attention.

Resilience has become an important topic on the safety research agenda and in organizational practice. Most empirical work on resilience has been descriptive, identifying characteristics of work and organizing activity which allow organizations to cope with unexpected situations. Fewer studies have developed testable models and theories that can be used to support interventions aiming to increase resilience and improve safety. In addition, the absent integration of different system levels from individuals, teams, organizations, regulatory bodies, and policy level in theory and practice imply that mechanisms through which resilience is linked across complex systems are not yet well understood. Scientific efforts have been made to develop constructs and models that present relationships; however, these cannot be characterized as sufficient for theory building. There is a need for taking a broader look at resilience practices as a foundation for developing a theoretical framework that canhelp improve safety in complex systems.This book does not advocate for one definition or one field of research when talking about resilience; it does not assume that the use of resilience concepts is necessarily positive for safety. We encourage a broad approach, seeking inspiration across different scientific and practical domains for the purpose of further developing resilience at a theoretical and an operational level of relevance for different high-risk industries. The aim of the book is twofold:1. To explore different approaches for operationalization of resilience across scientific disciplines and system levels.2. To create a theoretical foundation for a resilience framework across scientific disciplines and system levels.By presenting chapters from leading international authors representing different research disciplines and practical fields we develop suggestions and inspiration for the research community and practitioners in high-risk industries.This book is Open Access under a CC-BY licence.