From the Editor's Desk

Prediction and Prevention

Abstract

One of the luncheon speakers at the 2016 International System Safety Conference was Paul W. Hanley, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy (Safety). Mr. Hanley covered a number of topics, but one of his remarks struck me as particularly memorable: “We should want to get out of the explanation business and into the prediction and prevention business.” This is a key goal of system safety and we need all the tools we can get to help with the business of “prediction and prevention.” The first technical paper in this issue of Journal of System Safety, “A Novel Near-Miss Event Model with a Quantitative Assessment Methodology” by David R. Sadler, provides some help in this area.

In Memoriam: Dr. German A. Smirnov