A safety-failure is the occurrence of a harm or near-harm event within a system, arising from the breakdown of safety measures, controls, or protocols designed to prevent it. It is the concrete instantiation of a safety gap: when a identified risk materializes, or when a latent defect in procedures, equipment, or human judgment produces an adverse outcome. Parameters: (1) it must occur within a human-made system (industrial, organizational, infrastructural, or digital); (2) it involves actual or imminent harm to persons, property, or function; (3) it traces to a failure of some safety mechanism that existed or should have existed. Persistence mechanism: safety-failures are recorded in incident databases, reported through safety-reporting systems, and analyzed in post-incident reviews — the concept persists through systematic documentation, regulatory reporting, and organizational learning. [formal: failure_of_safety | substrate: behavior | horizon: a moment | explicit: yes | epoch: 0.62]
Accepted ontology entry
safety-failure
A safety-failure is the occurrence of a harm or near-harm event within a system, arising from the breakdown of safety measures, controls, or protocols designed to prevent it. It is the concrete instantiation of a safety gap: when a identif…
Definition
Why it is in scope
A human-made concept in safety engineering describing the condition where safety measures, barriers, or controls fail to prevent a hazardous event from occurring. The map distinguishes between different modes of failure (latent, active, systemic) and tracks how failures cascade through complex systems. Built to persist through standards (IEC 61508, ISO 45001), incident investigations, and safety-critical system design practice.
Names and aliases
- safety-failureen · CANONICAL
Relations from this entry
No accepted relations in this direction.
Relations to this entry
- cms82vo3z00odh6s86r3hkpih← SERVES
root-cause-analysis is a method built and maintained for the sake of investigating safety-failures. Its designed purpose is to identify underlying causes of failures. Law 8d: servant (RCA) points at master (safety-failure investigation/understanding).
- cms9s4zt801zq7skqdtg7gt81← INSTANCE_OF
A safety-lapse (a momentary deviation from safety protocols or a slip in vigilance) is a specific kind of safety-failure. A safety-failure is any breakdown in the safety system; a lapse is one particular form of that breakdown — distinct from a safety-violation (deliberate) or safety-deficiency (structural). Law 9: specific→general.
Record identity
- Created
- Aug 1, 2026, 7:31 AM UTC
- Content hash
- d1c9f35c52762268df282f5afbf63eb010f76ff81c22894f9b34ef14562761f1