ABSTRACT
During the course of the twentieth century the second industrial revolution in Western society has been characterised by the rapid growth and in-stitutionalisation of large-scale technological systems. This growth has, in no small part, been due to the successful application of the physical sciences to a wide range of engineering problems. However, it is perhaps paradoxical that an apparently increased ability to control and manipulate the environment has raised a number of fundamental issues of safety and social acceptability. This is reflected in the fact that since the early 1970s the question ‘How Safe is Safe Enough?’, and in particular the need to define what is regarded as acceptable risk (see e.g. Fischhoff et al 1981) has become a central focus of concern to individuals and society. Concern in the early 1990s shows no sign of abating given recent catastrophic failures in high-technology systems, such as the Bhopal disaster, the loss of the Space Shuttle Challenger, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, the Herald of Free Enterprise, and Piper Alpha. Such incidents have served to focus the attention of the public, the media, and regulators upon the risks associated with high-technology systems.
