veiligheidsvreemde

Veiligheidsvreemde is a Dutch term used in risk management and safety engineering to describe safety-related conditions, events, or factors that lie outside the normal safety boundaries of a system and are not anticipated by established safety analyses or requirements. It refers to hazards or disturbances that are not captured by standard design judgments and controls, making them difficult to predict and mitigate using existing procedures.

Origin and usage: The term combines veiligheid (safety) and vreemd (foreign/strange) and is primarily used in Dutch-language industry discourse and some risk-management literature. It is not a formal standard concept in major international safety frameworks, and its definition can vary between sectors. It is often used to highlight gaps between current safety measures and emergent or atypical threats.

Examples: Potential veiligheidvreemde factors include extreme environmental conditions beyond historical experience, novel cyber-physical attacks on safety-critical systems, supply chain disruptions introducing unsafe conditions, human factors or organizational changes that alter risk profiles, and new processes or materials that were not included in the original risk assessment.

Handling and implications: Addressing veiligheidsvreemde scenarios typically requires expanding hazard analysis to include external and uncertain threats, adopting flexible risk assessment approaches, and updating safety cases and procedures. It also emphasizes resilience, ongoing monitoring, cross-disciplinary collaboration, and iterative learning to incorporate unidentified risks as they appear. The term remains informal and context-dependent, serving as a reminder to consider safety beyond the established boundaries.