What are your definitions of safety, health and risk?
In this study Karanikas Haroun Zerguine collected answers from 55 participants in an Australian construction company.
Shared under an Open Access licence.
PS. Check out my YouTube channel – link in comments.
First they identify a dozen or more definitions for each based on existing work:
· For health, they’re grouped as: a) health as a state of the individual, b) as an ability/capability of the individual to … [with various sub-types), c) as an individual trait, d) combined individual state, ability and/or outcome
· For risk, they’re grouped as: a) a product of probability and consequence features, b) an outcome, c) as outcome parameters, d) as an ability
· For safety, they’re grouped as a) state/set of conditions. B) Result, output or impact (e.g., system outcomes or event consequences), c) Ability, reflected in functions, processes, activities, etc., d) Feature (e.g., characteristic, property, attribute)
Then they provide results from the workshop definitions, and an attempt to redefine them to cover multiple goals.
They provide a simplified, summarised and comprehensive definition for each health, safety and risk.
I’m just reporting safety here:
· Simple: Action(s) to control risks.
· Summarised: Action(s)6 to eliminate or mitigate risks.
· Comprehensive:
· Action(s) to eliminate or mitigate risks by:
o avoiding, reducing or withstanding harmful exposures to or/and interactions with various material1 and immaterial2 agents of specific properties4
o pursuing, strengthening or embracing necessary exposures to or/and interactions with various material1 and immaterial2 agents of specific properties4.
I think the more interesting part of this paper isn’t the proposed definitions, but rather the wide and varying distribution of how safety, risk and health are defined across the literature and different people.
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