van de Poel Ibo, Robaey Zoë
Department of Values, Technology & Innovation, Faculty of Technology, Policy & Management, Delft University of Technology, Jaffalaan 5, Delft, 2628 BX Netherlands.
Department of Biotechnology and Society, Faculty of Applied Sciences, Delft University of Technology, Van der Maasweg 9, Delft, 2629 HZ Netherlands.
Nanoethics. 2017;11(3):297-306. doi: 10.1007/s11569-017-0301-x. Epub 2017 Aug 22.
Safe-by-design (SbD) aims at addressing safety issues already during the R&D and design phases of new technologies. SbD has increasingly become popular in the last few years for addressing the risks of emerging technologies like nanotechnology and synthetic biology. We ask to what extent SbD approaches can deal with uncertainty, in particular with indeterminacy, i.e., the fact that the actual safety of a technology depends on the behavior of actors in the value chain like users and operators. We argue that while indeterminacy may be approached by designing out users as much as possible in attaining safety, this is often not a good strategy. It will not only make it more difficult to deal with unexpected risks; it also misses out on the resources that users (and others) can bring for achieving safety, and it is undemocratic. We argue that rather than directly designing for safety, it is better to design for the responsibility for safety, i.e., designers should think where the responsibility for safety is best situated and design technologies accordingly. We propose some heuristics that can be used in deciding how to share and distribute responsibility for safety through design.
设计即安全（SbD）旨在在新技术的研发和设计阶段就解决安全问题。在过去几年中，设计即安全在应对纳米技术和合成生物学等新兴技术的风险方面越来越受欢迎。我们探讨设计即安全方法在多大程度上能够应对不确定性，特别是不确定性，即一项技术的实际安全性取决于价值链中用户和运营商等行为主体的行为这一事实。我们认为，虽然在实现安全的过程中尽可能排除用户参与可能有助于应对不确定性，但这往往不是一个好策略。这不仅会使应对意外风险变得更加困难；还会错失用户（及其他方面）为实现安全所能带来的资源，而且是不民主的。我们认为，与其直接为安全而设计，不如为安全责任而设计，即设计师应思考安全责任最适合置于何处，并据此设计技术。我们提出一些启发式方法，可用于决定如何通过设计来分担和分配安全责任。
