10 years of the chair in safety science at the delft university of technology

Abstract

The paper describes the origins and position of the chair and Safety Science Group in Delft within the context of the broader debate on the role of higher education in the improvement of safety. It addresses the question as to whether a separate discipline could offer extra value to the teaching and research of the technical faculties, mirroring discussions in companies and government about the necessity of separate departments with a specific safety function. The paper also describes the search for a framework for the research of the group, which has been found in a systems approach in which the achievement of safety is seen as a creative, problem solving process, combining activities at individual (workplace/activity), organisational (work group/company) and societal (government/industry/transport system) levels. A matrix of research themes and application areas is described within this framework. A major preoccupation of the research has been to explore parallels across the frontiers of individual application areas (transport modi, work, environment, etc.).