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An Ontological and Semantic Foundation for Safety and Security Science

Sustainability 2019, 11(21), 6024; https://doi.org/10.3390/su11216024

by Peter Blokland^1,* and Genserik Reniers^1,2,3

Reviewer 1: Anonymous

Reviewer 2: Anonymous

Reviewer 3:

Cristina Raluca Gh. Popescu

Reviewer 4: Anonymous

Sustainability 2019, 11(21), 6024; https://doi.org/10.3390/su11216024

Submission received: 4 September 2019 / Revised: 9 October 2019 / Accepted: 23 October 2019 / Published: 30 October 2019

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Safety and Security Issues in Industrial Parks)

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Interesting study subject with potential contributions to theory and practice. The clearity of language is well established. Furthermore, a comprehensive histography of the concepts under the focus by this study.

The paper present interesting analyses and consequent concluding remarks.

However, on page 1 and 2, it is stated that “In industrial parks, it is important that (risk)managers from the different companies belonging to the park have the same understanding of the concepts of risk, safety and security. Because, only when a shared understanding of these concepts is present, organizations belonging to industrial parks are able to truly and optimally cooperate in the field of risk, safety and security.” In this regard, one might ask that where these statements come from? How one can be sure that there is no need for other insights into other concepts, in order to optimally cooperate in the field of risk, safety, and security? Since there is no citation, questions can rise.

- Again, on page 2, it is written that “Risk and safety are often proposed as being antonyms, but more and more understanding grows that this is only partially true and not in line with the most modern, more encompassing views on risk and safety.” Here, one can be curious to know that which study finds out that risk and safety are often perceived to be antonyms. Or which studies highlight that this common perception is only partially true? Please clarify.

- At the end of the paper, the limitations of the study can also be provided to inform the reader about the potential shortcomings.

- As this study is mainly dependent on conceptualization and secondary data, there is a need to demonstrate that previous literature is mastered in every aspect under the focus. In its current version, paper presents arguments in the form of narrative that is really not connected to pertinent previous studies. For example, section 3.4 discusses ontology as well as its linkage to risk, safety, and security, whereas little is discussed from previous relevant researches. One of the main core characteristics of an academic work is the evaluation of previous literature which in this paper is largely overlooked.

- It is rather difficult to find a clear discussion and elaboration on the methodological choices that are exploited in this research which could highly contribute to the clarity improvement in order to avoid confusion for the reader.

Author Response

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Interesting study subject with potential contributions to theory and practice. The clarity of language is well established. Furthermore, a comprehensive histography of the concepts under the focus by this study.

The paper present interesting analyses and consequent concluding remarks.

We thank reviewer 1 for his/her kind words and effort to provide ideas for further improvement of the paper. We have added extra references and text to cater for the concerns expressed. More specific answers to the issues raised can be found below.

Following text has been inserted, and references added on page 1 & 2.

“Companies in industrial parks are not only connected by mutual interests such as technological similarities, logistics advantages, and the like. They are also linked through the responsibility of obtaining and sustaining safety and security standards as well. Consequently, cooperation on topics concerning safety and security is highly relevant. Therefore, in industrial parks, it is important that managers from the different companies belonging to the park have the same understanding of the concepts of risk, safety and security. Because, only when a shared understanding of these concepts is present, organizations belonging to industrial parks are able to truly and optimally cooperate in the field of risk, safety and security [2, 3].”

This understanding is the concluding result of all of the references, mainly in the etiologic overview of the concept of risk, including text found in dictionaries (cfr. Lines 126 and 127). It is not a viewpoint to be attributed to a specific set of references, some of which ([1], [4]) even have this dichotomy in their titles.

- At the end of the paper, the limitations of the study can also be provided to inform the reader about the potential shortcomings.

An extra paragraph has been added at section 5. To cater for other viewpoints on the matter.

“However, the authors of this paper understand that other viewpoints on these topics exist and can be adhered to, as in the end, the concepts of risk, safety, security, performance and sustainability are human constructs that can be approached from different perspectives and with different mindsets. As such, this paper aims at providing a coherent point of view on these topics, to facilitate cooperation on these subjects, aiming for sustainable performance in industrial parks.”

The presented ontology and semantic foundation are the innovation this paper aims to bring to the world. It is founded in the entirety of the references proposed, expressed in the etiologic and etymologic overviews. It also comes from a lifetime of experience in the realm of risk and safety in the aeronautical and chemical sectors. As such, it is an original idea that can be discussed, as indicated in section 5.

In a previous version of the paper, the following section could be found. It was deleted as a result of an earlier review, where the reviewers were of the opinion that the paper was too long and could be made shorter. As such, we have re-introduced it in section 4.

“As it is the purpose to provide a fundamental way of looking at the concepts of risk and safety, it should not matter from which perspective this foundation is regarded and therefore should cater for whatever viewpoint one has on science. The proposed foundation should, as such, be equally available for any scholar or academic, independent from the scientific approach or philosophy one adheres to. It is why this article doesn’t wish to expand on the differing viewpoints on science or take any position in this debate. Any true foundation should be able to be inclusive in that regard and we believe that the proposed foundation remains valid irrespective of the chosen scientific philosophy, as it can be used for either a qualitative or a quantitative approach. Also, the observations concerning the historical evolution of the understanding of the concepts risk and safety can be seen as an inductive way of reasoning to come to the findings of the ontological and semantic foundation. While, at the same time, it is also possible to regard the proposed foundation as the result of deductive reasoning, starting from the etymological overview on risk and safety and the chosen definition of risk.

We are well aware of the fact that many different ontological and semantic foundations for safety science can be developed when different approaches and other specific viewpoints are used. Therefore, this article is also intended to stimulate thought and discussion on these fundamental concepts in order to learn and progress in understanding. As Aven declares, such discussion is considered to be very important for the development of the risk and safety science fields [6].”

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors clarify the meaning of safety, risk, and security in the uses and perceptions of relevant actors/parties. They tackle an important but underexplored issue in a manner that seems carefully thought out. Hope they continue to produce high quality scholarly work.

Author Response

Thank you so much.

Kind Regards

Reviewer 3 Report

Please be so kind to find my notes in the document attached.

It was a pleasure for me to have the chance to read your analysis on the concepts of risk, safety and security.

In addition, I would like to congratulate you for your thorough work and to wish you good luck both with your Article and with your future scientific works.

Kind regards

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Please find attached our response to your comments.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

The paper presents a discussion on some foundational concepts related to safety and security. English is good and the paper is well-structured. References on the addressed domain of interest are satisfactory but do not include ontology engineering literature. The topics are interesting. In particular, I liked the historical discussion in Section 2.

Remarks:

1) Presentation should be improved as the paper is very long and verbose. I would suggest to add some figures or tables.

2) As said above, the part of the paper presenting the ontology does not consider the existing literature on ontology engineering. Please note that an ontology is a formal and explicit specification of a (shared) conceptualization (see Tom Gruber definition). This is a well-defined and concrete artifact.

Reading the title of the paper a reader would expect to see either an ontology or an upper-ontology as a concrete artifact (e.g. owl file or, at least, "well-defined" tables of concepts and semantic relationships).

There exist several ontology engineering methodologies (see, for instance, NEON, UPON, ON-TO-Knowledge) that show how to build and present ontologies. I suggest the authors to give a look to them.

Author Response

sustainability-598903

Reviewer 4

Round 1-Major

Remarks:

Presentation should be improved as the paper is very long and verbose. I would suggest to add some figures or tables.

We thank reviewer 4 for his/her suggestion. We have considered this, but we think that in general, the figures 1a/1b in the form of Venn diagrams should be clear to understand the proposed ontology and that adding more figures or tables wouldn’t add anything to the paper.

As said above, the part of the paper presenting the ontology does not consider the existing literature on ontology engineering. Please note that an ontology is a formal and explicit specification of a (shared) conceptualization (see Tom Gruber definition). This is a well-defined and concrete artifact.

To cater for this concern we have added the following text and reference:

“There is an extensive amount of literature available regarding ontologies and how to engineer them. However, this is beyond the scope of this paper. The way we intend it to be is that an ontology is a set of concepts and categories in a subject area or domain that shows their properties and the relations between them. It is a particular theory about the nature of being or the kinds of things that have existence. Keet (2018) formulates it as follows: “ontologies provide an application-independent representation of a specific subject domain, i.e., in principle, regardless the particular application. Or, phrased positively: (re)usable by multiple applications.” [95]”

Keet, C. M. (2018). An introduction to ontology engineering. University of Cape Town.

Reading the title of the paper a reader would expect to see either an ontology or an upper-ontology as a concrete artifact (e.g. owl file or a well-defined tables of concepts and semantic relationships).

There exist several ontology engineering methodologies (see, for instance, NEON, UPON, ON-TO-Knowledge) that show how to build and present ontologies. I warmly suggest the authors to give a look to them.

We understand the reviewers concern for a formal approach to ontologies. However, the subject and our focus is on Risk, Safety, Security and Performance. Therefore we presume that more emphasis on ontology as a topic would subtract from the subject matter and possibly reduce the legibility of the paper, as it is already rather extensive.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

On page 1 and 2 it is written that “Companies in industrial parks are not only connected by mutual interests such as technological similarities, logistics advantages, and the like. They are also linked through the responsibility of obtaining and sustaining safety and security standards as well. Consequently, cooperation on topics concerning safety and security is highly relevant. Therefore, in industrial parks, it is important that managers from the different companies belonging to the park have the same understanding of the concepts of risk, safety and security. Because, only when a shared understanding of these concepts is present, organizations belonging to industrial parks are able to truly and optimally cooperate in the field of risk, safety and security [2, 3].” In this regard, an example can illustrate the practicality of the aforementioned statement, as it is mainly theoretically based.

- On page 2, it is written that “Risk and safety are often proposed as being antonyms, but more and more understanding grows that this is only partially true and not in line with the most modern, more encompassing views on risk and safety.” Although the statement can be intuitively obvious for the author(s), nevertheless, it doesn’t necessarily present the solid fact, therefore it could be strengthened by citation(s).

- The added limitation in section 5 taps into the subjectivity of the phenomenon under the focus, nonetheless, one might expect to see the limitations that authors dealt with during the paper development which are not pointed out.

- A methodological section requires clear statements on the methodological choices utilized in this paper associated with motivations and justifications behind them. For example, Is it literature review? If yes, systematic, narrative, etc? Is it empirical based? If yes, quantitative, qualitative, etc.? What specificities are applied? And Why?

Author Response

sustainability-598903

Round 2

Answers to Reviewer 1

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

In this regard, an example can illustrate the practicality of the aforementioned statement, as it is mainly theoretically based.

We thank reviewer 1 for this suggestion. Although the purpose of the paper is to discuss the meaning of risk, safety and security in a very broad sense, independent from sectors or industries, it might help for the reader to understand the importance of the subject by providing an example from a specific industry (chemical), to show its potential importance.

As such, we have added following paragraphs and related references.

For instance, Chemical Industrial Parks are an important element in the development and economic growth in countries worldwide. They benefit from a common infrastructure, minimal utilities costs, the presence of complementary products and services, functioning as force multipliers on the surrounding region. When properly managed, they bring the benefit of scale economics and bring prosperity to the region. The more explicit standardisation is, the greater these benefits are.

However, at the same time, these parks are high-risk areas, often showing great vulnerabilities and the potential for domino effects when things go wrong. As such, accident prevention and emergency response are crucial capabilities in preventing disasters and securing the economic benefits these clusters generate. Similar to the importance of standardisation of products and services for economic growth, it is important to have a common understanding of concepts such as safety and security to maximise efficiency and effectiveness in preventing disaster and/or improving health, safety and the protection of the environment. When the opposite is present, and communication between companies in industrial parks is hampered due to a lack of common understanding and emergency response is unorganised, due to a lack of standardisation and awareness of what matters, disasters happen.

Duan, W., & He, B. (2015). Emergency response system for pollution accidents in chemical industrial parks, China. International journal of environmental research and public health, 12(7), 7868-7885.

Cozzani, V.; Gubinelli, G.; Antonioni, G.; Spadoni, G.; Zanelli, S. The assessment of risk caused by domino effect in quantitative area risk analysis. J. Hazard. Mater. 2005, 127, 14–30.

Reniers, G.L.; Ale, B.; Dullaert, W.; Soudan, K. Designing continuous safety improvement within chemical industrial areas. Saf. Sci. 2009, 47, 578–590.

Although the statement can be intuitively obvious for the author(s), nevertheless, it doesn’t necessarily present the solid fact, therefore it could be strengthened by citation(s).

This statement is the result of the methodology followed and is based on the changes and expansion of the concerned concepts since entering the 21^st Century. Documents such as the ISO 31000 standard only come about after a long process of dialogue between experts, amongst which a number of academics, taking part in working groups. After reaching a certain level of consensus, these documents are examined by national mirror committees, also manned by experts with large experience, also amongst which academics. When standards in Project Management or Risk Management show this change regarding the perception of risk, we consider this statement is valid and supported by the references that are part of this paper.

The only limitations we are dealing with are in the minds of the beholders and our own incomplete paradigms, as is the case for any paper on a subject that needs to be discussed. Therefore the sentence indicating the subjectivity regarding these phenomena.

The methodology used is systemic, zooming out on history, looking with an open mind to the historical development of the concepts risk, safety and security, their similarities, differences and the expansion of these notions in the 21^st Century. As such, part of it is a literature review, but it is also grounded in a large experience on these subjects. As stated in section 4, it is the result of both an inductive and deductive approach, finally centred on the knowledge contained in the ISO 31000 standard and its vocabulary.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 4 Report

I am still convinced that the paper would benefit from a "more formal" approach. It looks more a discussion on what are safety, security and risk rather than a scientific paper on related ontological notions. The authors could be interested in the paper "The Common Ontology of Value and Risk" (https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-00847-5_11) to see how an upper model should be presented.

Furthermore an ontology needs to be validated by experts or a in a real application. How have you validated it? See, for instance, "A semiotic metrics suite for assessing the quality of ontologies" (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169023X0400223X)

Author Response

sustainability-598903

Reviewer 4

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

We sincerely thank reviewer x for his efforts and suggestions to contribute to this paper. Much has been learned from the remarks and proposed references on ontology engineering and formal ontologies.

Indeed this paper, as indicated in section 4, is intended to discuss how science can look at the concepts of risk, safety, security and performance, proposing a coherent ontological and semantic foundation. Nothing more and nothing less.

We understand that reviewer x has approached this paper from a more formal view on the concept ontology, maybe also related to computer science (in a broad sense). However, the paper is indeed written with the more general/philosophical notion of ontology in mind, being exactly what has been described in the paper and related to the being of intangible concepts. So indeed it aims to explain exactly what risk, safety, security and performance are (this is in line with how the meaning of the word ontology has been used and how it can be found in dictionaries). How these concepts are linked and what the hierarchy of these concepts are, related to reality. One could consider it as a very basic, yet fundamental ontology, from which other more specific ontologies (more specific and formal concepts) can be drafted or verified.

As such, the representation in the form of Venn diagrams is preferred to keep things simple and understandable for anybody who reads the paper and to make very clear what the hierarchies are.

We understand that it is possible to draw more formal, more specific, more complex (application) ontologies. But, this is beyond the scope of this paper, where it is only the purpose to provide a first step towards such more developed ontologies, eventually going into more detail of the different elements and perceptions of reality that can be distinguished and that play a role in risk, safety and performance, similar to the formal ontologies in proposed references.

So, it is only the very fundamental ontological relationships and hierarchy that is proposed in our paper, to fit with a semantic foundation, in order to provide a fundamental paradigm on risk, safety, security and performance, from which further study can be shaped.

The most important intention for this ontology is to be non-specific and useable for any kind of application. Therefore, elements of validation are:

Comprehensiveness, Consistency, Domain independence and

No formal methodology, other that peer review, has been used to validate this ontology. Any remarks regarding the mentioned qualities of the proposed ontological and semantic foundation have been corrected in previous reviews.

No remarks regarding these qualities have been noticed in the present peer review cycle.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 3

Reviewer 1 Report

I don’t see any scientific explanation regarding the comments or how the authors have addressed due to latest comments.

One can see a lack of explanation and/or demonstration of scientific methodological approach in the paper. the method part is important due to demonstrations of how reliable and rigorousness of the study.

Reviewer 4 Report

I recognize that we have different opinions about the meaning of "ontological and semantic foundation". Anyway the paper is good and could be interesting for the research community.

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This is an interesting paper, thank you. I suggest it is too long for most readers but leave that to the journal editor to comment upon. There is room in the first part of the paper for revision to make the paper more succinct - where you are setting the scene (Sections 1&2).

in 3.6 I wanted to clarify about lead versus lag indicators - I have thought of positive performance indicators as lead indicators but I wondered here if you considered them as lag indicators retrospectively - this may be worth clarifying further for other readers.

I got lost in the paper at around 3.9, this is possibly due to it being so long, by the time I got here it was hard to hold all the previous good content in my head. It is important for the reader to be totally with the paper when they get to 3.9 and 3.10. I wonder if some of the work in 3.10.1-3.10.4 might fit somehow in a table or be supported by a diagram to help the reader grasp your concepts here because this is a key part of your paper.

I think the argument about relating this to industrial parks throughout may strengthen your work - you do this well initially then it fades off then comes back weakly in discussion and in the conclusion so the thread throughout should either be strenghtened or reconconsidered.

I was not sure that I totally understood the narrow v's broad perspectives of in 3.10 - this is a valuable thought process so try to the reader get on the same wavelength as you - this may require just a little more direction/help from the authors. I had to read it several times to "get it" other readers may not be so generous with their time

I was not sure about the gambling example - I wonder if an example from an industrial park setting might fit here - even if this was then related to your gambling example - just to ensure the link is there.

Anyway you have raised valuable concepts for consideration

thank you.

Author Response

Please see attachement

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

    Very good foundation and argument in the introduction about the necessity of discussing clarity in safety terminology.Fully agree with analysis of current confusions

    Opportunities for shortening (if necessary) would lie in the section on security risks (around line 430) or in the philosophical discussion around line 510.

    In general, an interesting and valuable contribution to the debate about focus and terminology in safety management!

    Reg. Terminology in Figure 1a and 1b:

    The statement "The only 596 difference is that risk deals with a possible future state of reality, while safety is more concerned 597 with the actual conditions and effects of a specific situation." is - in my opinion - not well founded in the argument and its deduction. It appears that th eauthors argue that the only difference is the course of time from "future" risk to "present" safety.

Line 617: I suggest to keep the terminology the same as in he figure or vice versa.

Line 623 and following. The authors describe a security situation as a situation with diverging objectives of stakeholders. This point is hard to follow as it seems to simplify actual security risk situations It is hard to perceive insurgents or attackers as "stakeholders in its own operation".

The choice of 90 degrees as sign of maximum deviation instead of 180 degrees remains unclear.

The example given by the authors to explain (line 642 ff.) shows the unclarity of this concept of "security" as they fall back to - by their own admission - safety example. This section might need some reworking and clarifying. However, it can also be left as is and taken a a contribution to the hopefully lively debate.

In the reviewer's opinion, the distinction made in line 672 ff between safety and security seems clearer and immediately operational.

Section 3.8 Semantic foundation. This section seems to fit better into the introduction part and the deduction of the terminology than in the the middle of the argument. Moving it should be considered by the authors.

Same for Section 3.9. Should go into introduction part.

In order to shorten the article but also in order not to confuse the message of this article, I think that the sections 3.10.2 until 4 are actually helpful. I think the message would be clearer and the definitions would remain clear if these sections be dropped.

For a future reader, it would be helpful to have several examples from the world of work or of security as examples to demonstrate the usefulness of (a) the definitions and (b) the newly minted terms (e.g. unsafety). Unfortunately, the authors come to this point only in the discussion part, see lines 879 and ff.

All in all, an interesting contribution to a necessary discussion in safety sceicne and management.

Author Response

Please see attachement

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

1. The authors claim that they propose definitions of a set of terms, but they show no awareness of what a definition is. A definition has a definiens and a definiendum, and the latter is so constructed that some x satisfies the definiens if and only if it satisfies the definiendum. Their proposals do not satisfy this basic criterion.

2. There is a long history of attempts to define the terms they discuss (in particular "risk") in ways that deviate radically from common usage. These attempts have all failed. The authors show no awareness of this. They seem to take it for granted that a word in common usage can easily be redefined. That is not the case.

3. The "formulas" on lines 608, 617 and 693 are absolutely abominable. Have the authors even asked themselves the question "What does the plus sign mean here?"

There are a lot of other deficiencies in this paper. The authors are recommended to study basic literature on definitions and on the philosophy of risk (begin with the entry "risk" in the Stanford Dictionary of Philosophy, freely available online).

Author Response

Please see attachement

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Unfortunately, the basic problems that I pointed out in my review of an earlier version have not been dealt with. The authors do not even try to provide definitions that satisfy the basic criterion for a definition, namely that there definiendum and definiens should be equivalent.

I will mention just one example: On p. 19 we see a definition of safety (one of several alternatives) where the essential criterion of the definiens is that "the likelihood of positive effects on objectives is high". Trivial counterexamples to this definition can be obtained by constructing an example in which there is a high likelihood (perhaps certainty) of certain small but positive effects on objectives, but at the same time an equally high likelihood of very large negative effects.

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