Establishing & Building a Sustainable Safety Education/Culture at Okayama University

Okayama University established the Center for Safe and Disaster-Resistant Society in 2014. We aim to cultivate the safety culture in each engineer and stakeholders through our education program. In recent years, serious accidents have been continually occurring in large industrial facilities in Japan. As is well-known, many kinds of hazardous materials are being controlled in chemical facilities. If a severe accident occurs, there is the potential for serious damage to employees and the residents of local communities. We have a responsibility to convey what we have learned from experiences to the younger generation to provide them with safe working environments and protect people’s lives. Our society needs to be assured about the safety and reliability of industrial facilities to prevent accidents. Consequently, a number of activities, countermeasures, and assessment techniques have been proposed. We are required to predict potential risks before any accident or disasters occurs, take preventative/reactionary measures and organize a management system that is compatible with the risks. Though, every person may have a different sense of values, which ultimately lowers social awareness and creates difficulties in partnership. To construct a safety culture for all persons, safety education is especially important. Safety culture exists in people’s minds.

To construct a safety culture for all persons involved with safety engineering, the following aims are particularly important:

1. Involving individuals and organizations for safety responsibilities.
2. Having a mutual understanding and willingness to share information about risks and safety.
3. Promoting the inheritance of technology and safety knowledge.

A safety culture concerns the comprehensive attitudes and characteristics of both individuals and organizations. In this paper, we aim to present our activities concerning the Center for safe and Disaster-Resistant Society to promote safety education and culture. As researchers, we have run a research and education project related to safety engineering and risk management. Our main aim is to address the urgent need for highly-skilled and knowledgeable human resources in Japan. The key topics include safety design features for disaster-resistant societies: safety culture, risk management, security management, and public communication. We will provide graduate programs, including Master’s and Doctoral courses. Intensive courses will be available to post-graduates as well as management and technical staff working in relevant industries.

Convergence between academia and industry is important for building a strong safety culture. For our future generations, we need a steady and sustainable culture of safety in the field of chemical engineering.