Risk and safety in large-scale socio-technological (military) systems: a literature review

Contemporary military practice relies more and more on technology and its artefacts and seem to have become, thereby, large-scale socio-technological systems; systems in which the social and the technological are closely tied together. An important issue in these kinds of systems, especially military ones, is how to safely use this technology. This paper reviews the literature for research on risk and safety in large-scale socio-technological systems for their ability to account for the complex dynamics from which safety in these kinds of systems tends to emerge – or not. After this, it evaluates some current accounts of risk and safety in the military specifically, so as to assess the ‘status’ – or analytical strength – of accounts of risk and safety in this domain. More rigour is needed in evaluations of risk and safety of technology in the military so as to provide analyses with sufficient analytic strength. This rigour, it turns out, can often be found in the interdisciplinary STS (science, technology and society) literature that, until today however, does not often seem to address risk and safety of large-scale socio-technological systems directly, and which seems to pay even less attention to risk and safety in the military.