The strong power of standards in the safety and risk fields: A threat to proper developments of these fields?

Terje Aven and Ylönen, Marja

Reliability Engineering and System Safety, 2019, vol. 189, issue C, 279-286

Abstract: Standards like ISO 31000 on risk management are increasingly influencing the risk and safety fields, despite rather strong criticism concerning their quality. In this paper, we perform a thorough discussion of the application of standards in the risk and safety fields, using ISO 31000 as a case to illustrate the argumentation. The aim is to structure and summarise some key knowledge on the role of such standards in the progress and practice of these fields. The discussion addresses the scientific basis, the level of consistency, as well as the processes for developing and improving the standards. We conclude that the current trend of using standards represents a serious threat to the advancement of the risk and safety fields, and measures need to be taken to create broader and more scientifically based arenas for guiding risk and safety analysis and management practices.

Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0951832018312250
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:reensy:v:189:y:2019:i:c:p:279-286

DOI: 10.1016/j.ress.2019.04.035

Access Statistics for this article

Reliability Engineering and System Safety is currently edited by Carlos Guedes Soares

More articles in Reliability Engineering and System Safety from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().