Safety—Practitioners' Perspectives

Dear Colleagues,

Contemporary engineering is building ever more complex systems, especially through the integration of cyber and physical parts into cyber-physical systems (CPS) in domains such as transportation, manufacturing, healthcare, and power generation. New hazards and increased risks of CPS during operations are known and under the intense scrutiny of researchers. However, this research is seldom actively related to the engineering organisations that ensure that the design of said CPS is suitable for safe operations. This is problematic, as:

• Researchers might overlook important parts of engineering practice that influence the efficiency of the methods they propose for ensuring safety.
• Engineers might be unaware of new methods for ensuring safety or find it difficult to apply them.
• Managers in engineering organisations might be unaware of their role in safety when organising work (including implementing practice and methods).

This Special Issue invites papers that bridge this gap between research and engineering practice, for instance, (empirical) studies:

• Of engineering organisations and practice as related to the safe engineering of CPS.
• Relating novel methods for ensuring safety to CPS engineering processes or standards.
• Clarifying limitations on safety practice brought on by the sociotechnical context of engineers producing CPS.
• Safety management (assurance) in engineering organisations.