As today’s systems are growing in size and complexity, traditional approaches and tools for ensuring safety and reliability may not be adequate to explain their emergent behaviour(s). Moreover, systems have a dual identity, which is both social and technical, they are coupled and hence they form systems of systems with a behaviour that can be difficult to predict, explain or control.
Systems Engineering is an engineering discipline, which introduces a more holistic approach to dealing with the safety and reliability of complex systems. Academia is feeding industry with new achievements and industry offers a prosperous ground for applied research. This special issue is a unique opportunity to present approaches, techniques and tools founded on the principles of systems engineering to deal with future safety challenges, from academia and various industry sectors.
Having its deep roots in defence and aviation, systems engineering is gaining attention across many sectors. The papers published in this special issue touch on subject areas that are relevant to the construction, automotive and railway sector. Those areas are: Systems Engineering and Integration, Systems Thinking, Systems Safety, Complexity Management and Connected Systems.
The first paper (Farrand and Carhart) seeks to identify the main factors that affect the safety of the construction industry in economically and culturally different countries. The authors use systems thinking to identify ‘archetypal’ causal structures underpinning safety-related construction behaviours via a Grounded Theory analysis of interview data from construction safety professionals. The paper provides a view into the failings of construction safety management systems and the interventions to address them.
The second paper (Menon and Alexander) adopts a similar perspective, examining ethical and safety implications of connected and autonomous vehicles. The authors identify several factors which affect risk perception and acceptance, particularly where ethical principles are concerned, to increase transparency of the ethical factors which drive risk decisions. They present a process framework for producing an ethics assurance case, which can be used to translate ethical imperatives into design decisions and safety management practices.
The third paper (Dunsford and Chatzimichailidou) focusses on another mode of transport, i.e. railways, that is currently subject to technological change and digitalisation. They argue that as we continue to deliver extremely complex (mega)projects, with the use of novel technology and systems to support safety-critical functions, new modes of both machine failures and human errors arise. They discuss how the System-Theoretic Process Analysis (STPA) can supplement our current ‘toolbox’, promoting a systems-thinking approach to safety in the rail sector.
The fourth paper (Rajabalinejad, van Dongen and Ramtahalsing) considers the issue of safe systems integration across different engineering disciplines, especially in an era of newly developed technologies coupled with an expectation of users that the technologies will perform well, safely and reliably. It explains why safe systems integration goes beyond technical integration, requires the integration of hardware, software and humans, and involves hierarchical and behavioural aspects of a system. The author presents the Safety Cube theory, which outlines the main perspectives required for a safe integration of systems.
This special issue also contains a report (Chatzimichailidou and Karanikas) of the 2018 International Cross-Industry Safety Conference (ICSC) at which several presentations acknowledged the need for more systemic and systematic approaches to deal with the increasing complexity of systems. This event was a factor in generating the idea for this special issue.
I hope that this special issue will increase the appetite of academia and industry for more joint initiatives and cross-border collaboration in the field of systems, integration and safety as an emergent behaviour of complex socio-technical and cyber-physical system. The Safety and Reliability Society can facilitate this through their branch meetings and/or LinkedIn group. See their website www.sars.org.uk for details.
I would like to acknowledge and thank the authors, the reviewers and the Editorial Board for their patience and effort. My special gratitude to my friend and colleague Steve Denniss who made this special issue possible with his support as Guest Editor.