The SCSC publishes a range of documents:
The club publishes its newsletter Safety Systems three times a year in February, June and October. The newsletter is distributed to paid-up members and can be made available in electronic form for inclusion on corporate members' intranet sites.
The proceedings of the annual symposium, held each February since 1993, are published in book form. Since 2013 copies can be purchased from Amazon.
The club publishes the Safety-critical Systems eJournal (ISSN 2754-1118) containing high-quality, peer-reviewed articles on the subject of systems safety.
If you are interested in being an author or a reviewer please see the Call for Papers.
All publications are available to download free by current SCSC members (please log in first), recent books are available as 'print on demand' from Amazon at reasonable cost.
The club publishes its newsletter Safety Systems three times a year in February, June and October. The Newsletter is available to be read or downloaded from the website by all current Club members.
This edition of the newsletter, being the first to follow the SCSC’s symposium in February, gives us time to reflect on that landmark event and it is my great pleasure to provide highlights of proceedings in my report (page 35) along with copies of the posters displayed (page 51) during the interactive session on the second day. You can access a digital version of each poster by clicking on each image in the newsletter.
The event was very well-attended and it was great to see so many diverse and interesting talks. One striking talk from Prof. Harold Thimbleby highlighted the issues surrounding the Post Office Horizon scandal, arguably the worst miscarriage of justice in UK history. As with other organisations, the SCSC Steering Group has been moved to produce a statement on this incident that outlines what action the group believes organisations (including the SCSC itself) should take to ensure such events are not repeated in the future. You can see the full text of the statement on page 2.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) was an important theme for SSS’24 with some excellent talks and a dedicated AI Panel. If you missed this then I would encourage you to catch up with the video recording on the sessions to see the responses to various burning questions around AI such as: “How do we make AI safe?” and “What might limit the arguably unbridled expansion of AI systems?” SSS’24 also saw the formal launch of the SCSC’s Safe AI Working Group (SAIWG). The group aims to share knowledge and experience on various topics related to AI and safety systems, such as coordination of safety with other disciplines, evalu-ation of risk, and mapping of terminology and language. Please see the Working Group descriptions (starting on page 74) for more details on the group and how you can get involved.
We have also already embarked on a series of seminars relating to AI, and I hope to include a report of the first one: “Frameworks for Safe AI Systems” in the next edition of the newsletter. There is still time to book the remaining events with “Developing Safe AI Systems” being held in London on 27th June 2024 and “Deployment, Operations and Maintenance of Safe AI Systems” being held also in London on 26th September 2024. We are also very excited to announce our intentions to hold an international seminar on the safety of autonomous vehicles in Munich, Germany on 28th November 2024, so please watch out for further announcements on that event.
There have been a few changes in the Steering Group so I have pleasure in welcoming Yvonne Oakshott and Carmen Carlan both as new members to the group. You can find out a little bit more about Carmen in my 60 second interview with her on page 71. We also welcome Khadijah Khatun as new lead for the Safety Futures Initiative (SFI) to carry on the good work already done by Zoe Garstang and Nikita Johnson.
In this edition we have four great and diverse articles covering Building Safety, Policing, Railways and Artificial Intelligence (AI). I am also introducing a new ‘Letters to the Editor’ section (see page 33) where I will publish letters I receive on any matter relating to systems safety. Our first is from Dewi Daniels and I would invite you all to write in with any views and opin-ions for this section to be included in future editions of the newsletter.
Paul Hampton SCSC Newsletter Editor
paul.hampton@scsc.uk
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