Managing Future Challenges for Safety : Demographic Change, Digitalisation and Complexity in the 2030s

This open access book addresses the future of work and industry by 2040―a core interest for many disciplines inspiring a strong momentum for employment and training within the industrial world. The future of industrial safety in terms of technological risk-management, although of obvious concern to international actors in various industries, has been quite sparsely addressed. This brief reflects the viewpoints of experts who come from different academic disciplines and various sectors such as oil and gas, energy, transportation, and the digital and even the military worlds, as expressed in debates and discussions during a two-day international seminar. The contributors address such questions as:

• What influence will ageing and lack of digital skills in the workforce of the occidental world have on safety culture?
• What are the likely impacts of big data, artificial intelligence and autonomous technologies on decision-making, and on the roles and responsibilities of individual actors and whole organizations?
• What role have human beings in a world of accelerating changes?
• What effects will societal concerns and the entrance of new players have on technological risk management and governance?

Managing Future Challenges for Safety will interest and influence researchers considering the future effects of a number of currently developing technologies and their practitioner counterparts working in industry and regulation.

Hervé Laroche is a Professor in the Strategy, Organizational, Behaviour and Human resources department at ESCP Business School. His research concerns strategic decision processes, strategy formation, decision-making under risk and organizational reliability.

Corinne Bieder is the Head of the Safety management research program at ENAC (the French Civil Aviation University). She has worked and conducted research in safety management in a variety of high-risk industries for many years. She has published a number of papers and books on safety management, and is a member of the international NeTWork think tank addressing safety from a multidisciplinary perspective, as well as the strategic analysis group FonCSI (Foundation for an Industrial Safety Culture). 

Jesús Villena-López is a sociologist, ergonomist and editor, specialist in human, organizational and cultural factors of safety. Heis the director and owner of the publishing house Modus Laborandi and Ergotec where he has been working for the nuclear energy sector, oil & gas industry, air traffic control and railways since 1990. He has also been collaborating with ICSI (Institute for and Industrial Safety Culture) & FonCSI (Foundation for an Industrial Safety Culture) since 2012.