Hi there, this video is about
the concepts of safety and security.
The main question we are going to answer,
is pretty straight forward.
What is safety, and what is security?
As you may remember from the crowdsourcing
exercise, various examples of safety and
security issues were mentioned by
the participants in this course.
This means that safety and security
stand for a wide variety of issues.
It also means that the concepts
have a different meaning to people
all over the world.
In this video,
we will move beyond real life examples,
and we will adopt an academic perspective,
as we explore and
define the concepts of safety and
security.
Before we do so, it is crucial to
explain why it is important to feel that
our understanding of the concepts
of safety and security, why bother?
The first and most obvious reason,
is because it is the main
object of study in this course.
Second, safety and
security are fundamental drivers for
human beings in order to survive.
We all need to secure our basic
needs in terms of food and shelter,
and we wish to be protected from
violence and natural disasters.
Third, we live in technologically
advanced and interconnected societies.
This offers us opportunities and
it confronts us with complex, and
sometimes unexpected,
safety and security challenges.
These range from industrial incidents,
to cyber crime, to terrorist attacks.
Because of the reasons I just mentioned,
safety and
security issues generate
a lot of attention:
they worry citizens,
they rank high in political agendas,
and they are a key priority for
businesses.
As a consequence,
scholars from all over the globe look into
various aspects of safety and security.
So now that we are aware of the importance
of the concepts of safety and
security, let's further explore them.
Defining safety and
security is easier said than done.
This is because both are so
called contested concepts.
This implies that there are many,
sometimes contrasting descriptions,
of safety and security out there.
To complicate matters further,
the words safety and
security are sometimes
used interchangeably.
Therefore, it is about time to take
a closer look, and untangle both concepts.
So let's start with safety.
A concept of safety is most often
used to describe situations when
acquired values are harmed by
accidental flaws and mistakes.
These can be technical errors,
organizational failures, or
forces of nature.
A simple example of a safety issue is
enjoying a walk on a summer night and
getting hit by lightening.
This example demonstrates that safety is
about protection from accidental harm.
No human is causing you trouble, but
the accident seriously harms your
health and may even take your life.
Now let us have a closer look at security.
Security entails a similar mechanism.
Namely, harm to acquired values.
The main difference between safety and
security lies in the source of the threat.
In case of security,
acquired values are harmed by intentional
actions undertaken by human actors.
It just comes down to a person or
group of people taking deliberate actions
thereby causing a security threat.
Security is just about protection
from intentional harm.
An example for security issue is
becoming a victim of an armed robbery.
In this case your possessions,
or maybe even your physical, or
your mental health, are harmed,
by intentional actions of a human being.
Now let's do a short recap.
What are the definitions of safety and
security?
Safety is the condition of
being protected from harm or
other non-desirable outcomes,
caused by non-intentional failure.
Security is the condition of being
protected from harm or other non-desirable
outcomes caused by intentional
human actions or human behavior.
Now let us take a closer
look at similarities and
differences between safety and security.
In essence,
both concepts are about potential or
actual harm to acquired values.
These values can be just about
anything such as health,
possessions, or cultural traditions.
The main difference between safety and
security lies in the nature of the threat,
intentional versus non-intentional.
It is important to stress that
most contemporary security
challenges entail both security and
safety aspects.
Take for example the nuclear
disaster in Fukushima, Japan 2011.
An earthquake leading to a tsunami
caused a nuclear meltdown.
The safety aspect might be obvious here.
Non-intentional natural phenomena
caused harm to the nuclear plant and
endangered public health.
However, we cannot
overlook the human factor.
The security aspect here are the people.
Such as technicians and
representatives of government,
undertaking crucial actions that partly
contributed to the course of events.
This example demonstrates that we
need to focus on both safety and
security aspects in order to
fully grasp the disaster.
As I already mentioned,
the words safety and
security are often used interchangeably.
For reasons of brevity,
we will mostly use the word security
when referring to our field of study:
security studies.
When analyzing security issues,
we will use both concepts.
Now let us wrap up.
In this video, you've learned
to define safety and security,
as well as name the key similarities and
differences between both concepts.
This enables you to indicate and
understand contemporary
security challenges.
And before we start unraveling
security challenges,
we first need to understand what issues
actually qualifies as security issue.
This will be done in the next video.
