Description
Taylor & Francis Ltd Occupational Risk Control Predicting the Unwanted by Derek Viner
In Occupational Risk Control, Derek Viner brings together the historical and theoretical aspects of his subject into a coherent whole and then connects them with the needs both of practitioners and educators. The historical background, from early societies through the industrial revolution and into the early 20th Century is discussed as a means of understanding the individual and community prejudices and presumptions that underly society and that impede our effective control of risk. The author then brings together and develops the practical application of three hitherto disparate strands of scientific understanding of risk: energy damage, risk philosophy and engineering risk analysis. He also draws attention to the fact that the geological and botanical sciences can contribute much to our understanding of how to set about classifying (and hence better understanding) the phenomenon of damage and loss. To this mix, is added the contribution of law to our understanding of moral obligations for the control of risk and that of statistics to our understanding of the management of uncertainty. Viner argues that amongst the observable consequences of the absence of a holistic and science-based approach is ineffective legislation with limited vision as well as the prevalence of belief-based commercial risk and safety management systems of unproven value. The net effect of this absence, he suggests, is to be seen in the periodic occurrence of disasters of the magnitude of the Gulf of Mexico explosion and oil spill.show more