Towards Actionable Safety Science

This chapter presents a multiple-culture model combining the knowledge production perspective with a cultural perspective of different communities of practice. It focuses on the cultures of scientists and practitioners and their interactions. Safety science aims to produce knowledge that decision-makers and safety practitioners can utilise. A safety scientist should contribute to safety practice. A similar approach is described by P. Beier et al. who describe various routes towards actionable science and emphasise coproduction as the vital strategy. The gap can be viewed as resulting from the inherent difference between science and practice: science and practice have different purposes and different methods to achieve the purpose. AcciMap was derived from Rasmussen’s seminal work on risk management, which proposed a new, system-oriented approach that views the different levels and disciplines of the sociotechnical system as a whole, with special emphasis on understanding the interactions and adaptations between system components.