Two research themes are highlighted in this call. Their common characteristics are interdisciplinarity and the expectation that submitted projects be based on fieldwork on industrial sites, requiring a strong link between the academic world and that of industry, local government and civil society. 

1. Arbitration between partially conflicting goals: safety, economic performance, legal and societal constraints

Submitted research projects should:

• illustrate the manner in which this prioritization of partially conflicting goals is carried out in the field, via either formal or informal processes;
• propose novel techniques to aid in the arbitration process. 

The research may consider, for instance, the analysis of :

• bodies for dialogue and consultation/concertation (such as the french Comités d'Hygiène, de Sécurité et des Conditions de Travail); structures created by certain companies to assess industrial risks as a function of economic, socio-political and publicity "risks". 
• bodies for information and concertation (such as the french Comités Locaux d'Information et de Concertation) that gather different stakeholders (industry, associations, local government, etc.) in a given region.
  
• bodies that provide  advice and expertise as input to the political decision-making process (workgroups, commissions, expert committees, etc.)
• political bodies at various levels (regional, national, European); legal bodies
  
• various analysis methods, tools and bodies that may facilitate the arbitration process (cost-benefit analyses, "mixed forums", continual analysis of the evolution of science and technology, etc.)
  

The analysis of the prioritisation process may consider several categories of situation:

• ordinary, routine situations, without significant media, political and legal pressure on the people concerned (both within companies and outside them), but where a large number of potentially contradictory objectives exist. 
• pre-crisis situations, especially when questions related to industrial safety are subject to near-misses, whistleblowing, technical and scientifc controversy, to public debate;
• crisis situation, in particular following major accidents or catastrophes (or following from actions taken in anticipation of such events)

Research projects should be based on the study a number of practical cases in order better to understand how the arbitration between different requirements takes place, and in particular to attempt to suggest changes to make the process more explicit, more understandable, more open to debate. The scope of the research may however be wider, and consider for example the social, economic, political and cultural conditions that, in the current state of affairs, seem to encourage greater transparency and better public understanding of the arbitration process.

2.     Technological, human and organisational vulnerabilities and their safety ramifications

Safety means guaranteeing the absence of risk of intolerable losses. A great deal of research has been undertaken and applied to attain this objective. However, the proposed solutions generally assume that the state of the environment is known, in particular in terms of human resources, organisational processes and tools. In practice, these conditions are often not satisfied in industry. There is a need better to understand the way in which companies and other organisations that manage potentially hazardous activies may become safer, how they may reinforce their resistance to unwanted change and failure (notion of "resilience"), both at the technical and technological, humain and organisational levels, and at the interface between these various levels.

Research projects should:

• identify and analyse one or more vulnerabilites, with a particular interest in emergent or novel vulnerabiliies 
• explore strategies that might allow companies and organisations to take account of and tolerate these vulnerabilities

The research work may concern, for example: 

• new technical and technological vulnerabilities, for example due to the increasing complexity of computer systems, to the ageing of materials and structures, to the obsolesence of certain technologies or processes, or to vulnerabilities arising from the erosion of safety margins in order to increase performance. 
• vulnerabilities arising from human interactions in the workplace, to human performance (given the multiple and sometimes contradictory constraints that affect workers at different levels, from the operator to the CEO; given the effects on workplace collectives of turnover, of waves of retirement, of cultural differences due to generational gaps, of problems related to the transfer of "organisational memory", etc.)
• vulnerabilities arising at the organisational level (and especially due to the --sometimes rapid-- structural changes caused by mergers and acquisitions, to the redistribution of activities, to changes in goals, etc.). Special attention may be paid to the study of the organisation of information flows and mechanisms used for internal communication in order to maintain a "safety dynamic" despite these evolutions.

Among the novel approaches for improving the management of these vulnerabilities, the following research points appear particularly interesting:

• mechanisms and means that encourage continual critical review / assessment of the models and tools used at the end of the design phase to characterise operational risks in operation (given the importance of simulation techniques, the increasing difficulty of revisiting the fundamental assumptions made during the design phase, given also the manner in which these tools and models are learned and used by the people who manage risks)
• mechanisms and means that allow the safety impact of design errors and operational errors to be tolerated 
• new attitudes to rules and regulations; degrees of freedom/autonomy given to individuals or workplace collectives that may help resolve problems caused by the multiplicity of cultural repertoires (systems of values and strategies used to justify one's position on a controversial issue) within companies
• the organisational designs and operational modes that may allow: vigilance, effective transfer of knowledge and know-how, the development of a "safety memory" (for instance transverse or network-oriented organisations); effective interaction between quality assurance procedures and safety procedures; the detection and analysis of "safety drift", of processes of "normalisation of deviance" and their integration with the risk management system; the management of increasing diversity in the workforce (in particular due to subcontracting).

Projects should aim to improve the analysis of vulnerabilities in high-risk organisations, with a focus on new forms of vulnerability (whether their novel nature arises from the fact that they have only recently been identified as vulnerabilities, or to the fact that the underlying phenomenon is new). The work should provide suggestions on approaches that can help in managing these vulnerabilities, by making organisations more "robust", or from a different perspective, by making them more "resistant" to manifestations of vulnerabilities, creating "resilient organisations". 

Interconnections may be made between the two themes (in particular if the management of novel forms of vulnerability is considered to be inseperable from the arbitration process between economic requirements, safety requirements and the search for more openness in the decision-making process.