The welfare-state includes a number of safety critical complex systems, such as power generation, transportation and healthcare delivery. The creation of a safe society is hinged upon the ability to foresee and manage the risks within such systems.

The operations within safety critical systems is characterized by the management of seemingly competing goals, where safety, productivity, service and scarcity all may be fundamental for the organizations existence. It has been shown that many accidents within complex systems are unanticipated synergy effects that occur in the pragmatic tradeoffs between the different goals. Safety is therefore not so much a question of what basic components and safety barriers are included in the system, but rather a question what the system does.

Resilience Engineering is a paradigm within safety research that looks at how complex systems show capability to recover the balance after a mishap, or keep the balance in the presence of continuous stress. In contrast to traditional safety thinking, which with structural means tries to prevent accidents, Resilience Engineering focuses on the ability to actively anticipate changes and threats. The project in question aims to shed light on how organizations within different systems convert lessons from past failures into a capability to better recognize and adapt to risks.

The project was started in January 2006 and is due to finish December 2008

Project director: Sidney Dekker, Lund University
Project members: Erik Hollnagel, Linköping University
Räddningsverket's contact person: Alf Rosenberg