System Safety Primer

System safety is an engineering discipline that is applied during the design and development of a product or system to identify and eliminate/mitigate hazards, thereby preventing potential mishaps and accidents. System safety is ultimately about savings lives. It is a proven technique that is currently applied on a diversity of systems, such as commercial aircraft, military aircraft, ships, trains, automobiles, nuclear power plants, weapon systems, chemical processing plants, mining, software, and medical devices. The lack of system safety costs millions of dollars in damages and loss of lives every year due to preventable mishaps. The purpose of this book is to provide an introduction to the system safety process; it presents the tools, techniques and processes involved in the system safety discipline. This book is intended for persons from various industries who are interested in making safe products and systems. It should be very useful to those individuals new to the system safety discipline with a desire to understand the basic methodology. It is also intended as a refresher for system safety practitioners that already apply the system safety process in their daily job. This book is for engineers, analysts and managers who are confronted with the responsibility of developing safe systems and products.