A project team of the IEC Market Strategy Boards (MSB) has published a white paper on the future of standardization.
The white paper addresses safety in the future by referencing current social trends and initiatives such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals and various real-life examples of projects, works and companies that are pioneering innovative safety solutions for the future.
The principal recommendations proposed include:
- Social goals should be established that aim to achieve both safety and efficiency, by shifting from a safety model based on separation of man and machine to one in which safety is achieved through man-machine cooperation.
- Consideration should be given to the possibility that humans may not be the smartest component in a human-machine collaborative system. A new concept of safety should be elaborated through the development of technology and the reconfiguration of man's place in the system.
- Measuring safety outcomes has formed a key part of safety management systems for many years, with a focus on incident statistics. However, a more forward-looking, proactive approach could be adopted by introducing "leading" indicators into the calculation.
- Standards bodies need to expand and deepen their holistic approach to safety. This will require incorporating not only traditional technical expertise but also insights gathered in the fields of safety psychology, sociology and human behaviour, in other words, it is recommended that in the development of future safety standards, clear attention be paid to non-technical factors.
IEC White Paper "Safety in the future"
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