About the Section Safety & Security Science
Vision
Our vision is to be a global leading institute for creating a safer and more secure world for all.
Mission
Our mission is to contribute to responsible risk management through research, teaching and providing service, by identifying and offering ways to improve safety and security across sectors. We aim to
- Optimize decision-making in uncertain situations where value-conflicts occur
- Be trendsetting about safety and security science-related innovative thinking, research and education
- Provide guidelines and tools for decision-makers at different levels and in different settings
- Use multi- and transdisciplinary approaches, which are generic and generalizable across sectors
- Advocate for best practices in safety and security
- Engage and contribute to (life-long) learning
Strategies
The strategies to achieve our vision and mission are (non-exhaustive list):
- Develop, apply and improve risk-related strategies, methods and techniques used in engineering
- Develop, use and improve risk-related strategies, methods and techniques throughout and across different disciplines and sectors such that engineering can learn and improve its strategies by incorporating methods from other fields and vice versa
- Engage with stakeholders
- Ensure that developed state-of-the-art safety and security research results and education approaches are put on the agenda of policy makers and captains of industry
- Communicate, participate and exchange knowledge with academic and societal-relevant safety and security communities and with society as a whole
- Organize and participate in workshops, conferences, seminars, and other research and education related events
- Publish research results in high-ranked safety and security scientific journals
- Actively elaborate and participate in multi-stakeholder and multi-disciplinary projects
- Be a frontrunner in developing and applying techniques for training, educating, and teaching safety and security contents
- Implement the techniques once developed, and develop implementation strategies
History
In 1978 a symposium was held in Delft to discuss the contribution that the university could and should make to safety in society. From this initiative the current Section of Safety & Security Science grew; A chair in Safety Science was established in 1984. An additional chair in safety of hazardous materials was established in 2013 and a chair on safety in healthcare in 2017.