Glimpse of safety science development in China: A review of safety fundamental research and construction of six new postgraduate courses for safety majors by safety & security theory innovation and promotion Center of Central South University

Abstract

After more than half a century of development, the safety discipline has accumulated many theories, methods, models, and principles, but these results are still relatively scattered in various fields, and have not formed a complete subject system. Furthermore, there remain many gaps in the foundations of safety science over the years, and there are few textbooks on safety fundamental theory that are usable by postgraduate students in safety majors. To fill the gaps, this paper introduces a project concerning fundamental safety research and the construction of textbooks and new courses on safety science theories for the postgraduate education of safety majors. These texts and courses were created by the Safety & Security Theory Innovation and Promotion Center of Central South University. The project depended upon a strategy of “innovating safety science theory, publishing a series of papers, writing postgraduate textbooks, setting up postgraduate courses, and popularizing them to universities all over China.” After persisting for over ten years, our research group published more than 200 papers (mostly in Chinese journals) and compiled these papers into 11 monographs or textbooks. These books were Principles of Safety & Security Science, Methodology of Safety Science, Safety Statistics, Safety & Security Informatics, Safety Culturology, and Safety Pedagogy, among others. Then, the corresponding courses were opened and matching teaching materials were built. Accordingly, these courses were popularized in many universities with safety majors in China. The above works have achieved remarkable effects and played an important role in the development of safety science. This review provides a glimpse of safety science development in China. Our experiences are also significant insofar as providing reference value for the basic research on safety science and talent training worldwide.