Safety at Work and Emergency Control: A Holistic Approach, Second Edition (PDF)

This book treats 'the accident' as a multifaceted phenomenon, resulting from complex interactions between physical, biological, psychological, cultural and social factors. Addressing safety with holistic vision, it combines two complementary approaches: the reductionist, to study the factors in detail, and the systemic, to understand how they interrelate. It includes 33 concepts that provide a clear and logical understand of every factor involved in any activity or situation regarding safety.

The author developed concepts and methods to boost safety performance. Organizational field, adherence and administrative game explain why things happen or not happen in the organizations. The aggressive function integrates value analysis and risk analysis. An individual adopts a safe or unsafe behavior the same way he decides to buy a product or another. Safety is a function placed at the same importance as its sisters, productivity, quality, environmental preservation and human development. Risk is a process variable and as such one can control it.

• Presents a set of 33 concepts that provide a clear and logical understanding of every factor involved in any activity or situation regarding safety


• Discusses risk as a variable associated with any activity, and that it can be controlled similarly to any process variable, such as temperature or pressure


• Uses the concepts of value analysis and value engineering when thinking about safety


• Provides directions on how to integrate the safety function into the mission of any organization, and into other vital functions of the organizations


• Addresses safety with a holistic vision, as it's central element