LATEST NEWS (March, 2022)

It is a pleasure to announce the publication of my new book: ‘Introduction to Safety Science: People, Organisations, and Systems’ by Routledge under their CRC imprint. The book is designed to introduce readers from a wide variety of backgrounds to the newly emerging science of safety. The book takes readers on a journey from approaches to safety that focus on individual behaviour, through approaches that take the organisation as the main focus of analysis and finally to the emergence of safety as a science of whole systems. The emphasis is on making the key concepts and developments associated with each approach accessible and interesting.

The book is available in hardback, paperback and electronic versions. For further details please visit:

Introduction to Safety Science: People, Organisations, and Systems – 1 (routledge.com)

Safety is the absence of incidents and accidents – seems simple enough. Or is it?

The traditional view of safety as avoidance of loss which is reflected in current approaches to safety and risk management has been subject to several recent searching critiques offering a radically different perspective on safety in a variety of industries and settings.

The structure and function of accident investigation is now open to question as is the role of ‘human error’ in understanding adverse events. Will the new ‘revisionist’ views of safety replace the old view or come to be seen as complementary to the traditional view?

This website has grown out of a postgraduate course at the University of Otago on ‘Safety Science and Application’ (PSYC432) and contains documents, links and other potentially useful information for those seeking to better understand safety in the twenty-first century. Comments, suggestions and additions are most welcome.