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.
