Systems Thinking for Safety

ISSN: 2571-6913

Advisory board: Professor Erik Hollnagel, University of Southern Denmark; Professor Ragnar Löfstedt, King’s Centre for Risk Management, King’s College London, UK; Professor Alan Irwin, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark; Captain Rogers E. Smith, NASA Dryden Flight Research, USA; Professor Washington Yotto Ochieng, Imperial College, London, UK; Professor Dominic Elliott, University of Liverpool Management School, UK; Captain Tim Berry, Jet2; Dr Robert Hunter, British Air Line Pilots Association (BALPA), UK; Dr Anne Eyre, Trauma Training Ltd, UK; Dr David Fletcher, University of Leicester, UK; Associate Professor David Ison, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, USA; Dr Terry Shevells, University of Leicester, UK; Associate Professor Tony Masys, University of South Florida, USA; Dr Simon Bennett, University of Leicester, UK. Series description: This series draws on the success of the systems-thinking approach to safety management in commercial and military aviation, with a view to improving safety performance in other complex socio-technical systems, such as health-care, nuclear power generation, chemicals production, oil and gas extraction, deep mining and sea and rail transportation. Following the 1977 Tenerife air disaster (that killed 583 people), a traumatised and vilified aviation industry resolved to improve its safety performance. The adoption of a systems-thinking approach to risk analysis and mitigation, expressed in innovations such as the teamworking protocol crew resource management, has benefited the industry. According to the International Air Transportation Association, in 2024 the global all-accident rate was 1.13 per million flights, equating to one accident for every 880,000 flights. You are much safer in a pressurised aluminium tube cruising at eighty per cent the speed of sound six miles above terra firma than you are driving up Britain’s M1 motorway on a sunny day in a modern automobile, fully alert and not under the influence. The series is aimed at practitioners as well as academics and students. To this end, it is written in an accessible style with jargon explained. This reflects its purpose: to leverage change.

3 publications