System safety

System safety is a concept in safety engineering that calls for engineers to use a systems-based approach to developing risk management strategies. While traditional safety strategies focus on modifying systems to avoid the conditions that resulted in past system accidents, system safety analysis focuses on proactively identifying and analysing hazards before an accident can occur. Once these hazards are understood, engineers can then propose changes to the system to eliminate, control, and/or manage them throughout the life-cycle of the system.

System safety also emphasizes that a system is more than the sum of its parts. Engineers must be aware that hazards that can arise from any part of a system, but also from the interaction of two or more of these parts.

System safety analyses can be used to demonstrate the safety of a system when performing probabilistic risk analysis would be difficult or impossible. "Hazop" is one of several techniques available for identification of hazards.