Safety and Forensic Sciences | ![]() |
"Safe" is a relative term that has many bases for
comparison. Codification and regulation are social value-system measures of how
safe a product or process needs to be, and these measures often change with
time. "State-of-the-art" and "custom and practice" help establish consistency
and evolution in products and processes. Accident frequency and distribution
help rank and identify trends for safety. The application of human factors also
allows for the evaluation and prediction of how users may use, misuse and
appreciate equipment response and operation. Safety relies on more than physical
guarding, and can include elements of training, vigilance and practice.
"Forensic science"
often involves documentation and application of engineering science and physical
principles to provide evidence of events or conditions. These methods try to
answer the questions of how, why and when, and may be applied to situations
where only technical methods can establish the logical sequence of events based
on evidence. Forensic tools may include accident reconstruction, evaluation of
time sequences, physical and computer simulations, and dimensional analysis.
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