The next generation of safety standards – wishful thinking?

摘要

Safety standards are a description of best. Changing technologies are leading to new waysrnof doing things and the standards need to be regularly updated. Such updates are also an opportunity tornremove the weaknesses and inconsistencies that have been revealed after the first years of experiencernwith applying them.rnStandards are unfortunately inconsistent: there are almost always several standards that applyrnsimultaneously. Standards are fuzzy: they have unclear, incomplete, inconsistent and often evenrnunnecessary definitions. Standards are incomplete: they address a specific aspect of safety, typicallyrnthe technical properties of instrumentation or equipment. But safety can be achieved with severalrnmeans, such as utilising the laws of nature (design properties) or applying administrative procedures.rnQualification of personnel can also influence the safety properties of the final product, but there is nornstandard for qualification of safety engineers. These aspects must be considered, even if the standardsrndon't address them.rnStandards can become obsolete as fast as the technology that they are addressing. Incorporating newrnand emerging technologies in a standard is a challenge, but not an impossibility. For the next update ofrnthe standards, the foregoing aspects could and should be addressed. This would give us consistent,rnclear-cut and holistic safety standards.